


Thicker Than Water

by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: (oh my god they were roommates), Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst and Feels, Blood Kink, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M, Human Disaster Garcia Flynn, I am so sorry, It's Werewolves and Vampires Guys, Lots of Blood and Stuff Because Vampires and Werewolves Guys, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Rufus Does Not Deserve This, So Remember How Earlier I Said This Was Fluffy, The Smut is Gonna Be Kinky, They Did This Without My Permission, Trash ot3, Vampire Disaster Garcia Flynn, Whatever Kink You're Thinking Of, Wyatt Logan's Bisexuality Crisis, Yeah It's Probably In Here, and they were ROOMMATES, biting kink, eventual polyamory, or should that be, shut up i'm hilarious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-09 17:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20998514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/pseuds/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels
Summary: When newly-turned vampire Garcia Flynn begins waging a one-man war against witches, a team is set up to stop him: werewolf Wyatt Logan, witch Lucy Preston, and human biologist Rufus Carlin. But all four of them quickly realize they've been played, and desperate times call for desperate measures.Namely, shacking up in the same hideout together.It all goes about as well as one might expect.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post, https://qqueenofhades.tumblr.com/post/174379916834/hi-love-your-blog-what-do-you-think-of-a-vampire 
> 
> I proceeded to write this, https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/175585676483/garcyatt-witchwerewolfvampireetcwhatever-au 
> 
> ...which has now become this fic. Title is from the Biblical saying, "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

Lucy Preston waved her badge at the desk librarian as she entered the archives. With the more powerful magical tomes a person needed clearance to get in, but most of the workers here knew her by sight at this point.

“Did you hear the news?” Sharon, one of the other researchers, whispered as she hurried up. “There was another attack, they can definitely say it’s a vampire now—”

“Mornings are for research,” Lucy reminded her. “Afternoons are for drama.”

She was more nervous about these attacks than she would have liked to admit, if only because the perpetrator seemed to be going after very old and powerful families in the witch community—and the Prestons definitely fit that bill. Lucy wasn’t so much worried for herself as she was for her mother, and for Amy. Amy, who had yet to manifest any magic despite being twenty-seven by now and would be absolutely defenseless against a supernatural attacker.

Not that having magic had really done much for the victims who’d already been attacked, but at least it gave a person a higher chance of survival.

And if this attacker really was a vampire…

Lucy shoved her dark thoughts away. Nope, no, it was research time. That was what she was focusing in on. She might not always be on the same wavelength as her mother, despite Carol Preston’s best attempts, but she was a lot like her mother in one aspect: they both loved research, studying, history. And Lucy’s magic was best suited for historical research, so, really, it had all worked out.

Now, time to get back to that bit on the Salem Witch Trials…

“Lucy.”

She jumped up from her desk, nearly knocking over her pile of books. Carol Preston, her blonde hair (dyed now, since she’d started going gray a few years ago) perfectly styled, her makeup precise and conservative, stood across from her daughter’s desk.

“You startled me,” Lucy said, needlessly since her jump had pretty much shown that already.

Carol didn’t bother apologizing. Carol rarely apologized for anything. If an apology was necessary, it was assumed that the person knew and understood that, and there was no need to go into it. “You heard there was another attack last night.”

“Um, Sharon said something about it, honestly I was busy with—”

“Honestly, honey, sometimes I worry you’re not keeping up with the community at all.” Carol smiled in that way she got, that _silly Lucy _kind of way that made Lucy contemplate flinging herself off a cliff.

Lucy could’ve been at the head of the Magical Rights marches and it wouldn’t have been enough for her mother. _You need to be more of an activist, honey, _but God forbid she be an activist about, say, her bisexuality, or Black Lives Matter, or—insert an appropriately elegant shudder from Carolyn Morgan Preston here—werewolf rights. Lucy had been the golden child growing up, the kid who read at college levels in elementary school, the one who got vivid time-images when she was only three and touched one of Benjamin Franklin’s journals that her mother had left lying on her desk. The pressure to keep that up, to stay on top of it all, hadn’t exactly endeared the magical community to her. She’d never asked to be this way. She’d never asked to be their second coming.

And she’d seen how witches treated Amy, who was from a magical family but lacking magic herself.

She cared about how people saw witches, of course she did. Those stereotypes about them all being worshippers of evil was nonsense and she wanted to do her part to show the world that witches were no more inherently good or bad than any other group of people out there. But she hadn’t asked to be the community’s rallying point, and frankly she didn’t appreciate her mother treating her like the crown princess of witches who had to make a public statement of some kind anytime anything happened in their community. It had been fun to be ‘Princess Lucy’ when she’d been ten and people had cheered. Now it just made her want to throw up.

“I’ll look into it when I finish my morning shift,” she said, instead of starting an argument she knew that she’d lose.

“They’re putting together a special task force, supernatural and non-magical people working together to go after the perpetrator.” Carol sounded unusually pleased about this. “We finally have a name.”

“That’s great.”

Carol watched her for a moment as Lucy reset her book pile. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“To tell me about the news, I presume.”

“No, sweetie.” Carol smiled again. “Because you’re on the task force. A woman called this morning but you’d already left the house. I just had to tell you the news in person. You’re the team leader.”

Lucy really did drop her books that time.

* * *

Denise Christopher of Homeland Security was the sort of woman that reminded Lucy of a tree, but the kind of tree that had been standing in the forest for a hundred years, watchful and wise and in-fucking-moveable, so good luck trying. The kind of person who looked like she’d been born wearing a suit.

“Ms. Preston.” Agent Christopher shook Lucy’s hand and led her into the briefing room. “We’re so glad to have you.”

Lucy arched an eyebrow as she took in the other two people that were in the room. One was a sandy-haired guy, good looking in a way that was painfully small-town good-boy American, lounging in his chair and looking like he was asleep. The other was a black man sporting a shirt that said _Han Shot First_ and the tired look of someone who had been in front of a computer for a week straight with no sleep.

“Ms. Preston, this is Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan of W Force,” Christopher said, and Lucy felt her blood spiking as the blond man opened his eyes. Not sleeping after all—but then, maybe he had been. You never knew with werewolves.

She could sense it, now, the magic in her telling her to be wary, sensing a predator. W Force was the name given to the werewolf special forces unit in the military. Of course higher ups had tried to give it a more pretentious and less obvious name, Romulus or something like that, but W Force had been the name that stuck.

“And this is Rufus Carlin, our biologist. He specializes in supernatural biology.” Ah yes. Rufus would study things like why bitten werewolves were different than born werewolves—and why vampires went into blood frenzies. Lucy could see why he had been recruited.

“I think this room is a little empty,” Lucy noted. “Where’s the vampire representative?”

Christopher’s eyes flickered. “They declined to send one.”

Great. That was going to look fantastic on the record—a task force made up of every creature except the kind they were hunting. Way to strain relationships between species.

Christopher looked over at the men. “This is Lucy Preston, she’s a historian at Stanford and a witch.”

“I have time magic,” Lucy supplied. It was one of the many names for the magic she had—the ability to see people’s pasts, to literally witness historical events as if she was there, so long as she was touching an actual artifact.

Technically, time magic implied that she could go both ways, but seeing the present or the future, that wasn’t how it worked, at least not for any witch she knew of. There was only the past.

“Ma’am,” Wyatt Logan said.

“I’m pretty sure we’re the same age,” Lucy snapped quietly, her nerves already a bit frayed. “There’s no need to call me ma’am.”

“I’d appreciate it if you all found a way to get along,” Christopher said mildly. “As you can imagine, humanity is not taking too kindly to these attacks. The supernatural world is under pressure to find a solution, and both witch and werewolf representatives would appreciate the show of solidarity with humans. So, let’s set aside any personal egos and get started.”

She picked up a remote and clicked on a screen, showing a PowerPoint presentation. “Garcia Flynn. Former NSA asset turned vampire. He murdered his family in 2014 in a bloodlust and disappeared. Only now he’s started to resurface, and he seems to be targeting human and witch families.”

* * *

Rufus did not like this. He did not like this one bit.

“You realize I am, like, the last person who’s possibly qualified to go after a raging vampire, right!?” he hissed to Mason. Connor Mason was the head of the bio research company Mason Genetics, specializing in research on the supernatural to help with things like werewolves controlling their transformations. Humans were still pretty damn wary about the supernatural, and Mason worked to make sure everyone felt safe.

So really, Rufus understood why Mason had volunteered someone’s services for this job. But did it have to be _him_!?

Mason sighed. “Rufus, you’re the best that I have, and only the best will do for this. Do you have any idea the sort of people who are breathing down my neck right now?”

Rufus glanced over Mason’s shoulder. Jiya Marri, one of his coworkers, was sitting just a few feet away. He’d been trying to get up the courage to—well, to ask her out, honestly, even in just a friend way if that was all she wanted, sure, he could do friends, but this in-between maybe-flirting, super-close-friends-at-work-but-nowhere-else thing they had going on was killing him.

Now they had this whole… mission to stop a killer vampire thing going on, which, what, his life was not supposed to go like this, and he was probably going to die, chomped on by one six-foot-four Croatian who served in a list of wars longer than Rufus’s damn arm.

He just, really would have appreciated getting to at least tell Jiya how he felt, or ask her out for a proper coffee, before that happened and he was sent away to be out in the field for weeks.

Months.

Ugh.

Mason rested his hands on Rufus’s shoulders—a sure sign he was serious and wanted Rufus to pay attention. He’d been doing it since they’d first met when Rufus was in high school, and even though Rufus had gotten a growth spurt and was now taller than Mason by a couple of inches, and broader in the chest to boot.

Rufus tore his gaze away from Jiya, who was scribbling notes in Klingon because she was a nerd who did that when she didn’t want anyone else to read her work notes (God he was in so deep), and focused on Mason. “What’s up?”

Mason pulled out a small case from the drawer of his desk and passed it to Rufus. “Your team’s objective is to arrest Garcia Flynn, yes?”

“Uh… I mean ideally arrest him, but Christopher made it clear that if Wyatt ends up killing the guy instead he’s not gonna lose out on his Christmas bonus.”

Mason nodded. “Whenever you can, we need you to get a sample of Flynn’s blood and deliver it back to me.”

“We? Who’s—we?”

Mason pushed the case further into Rufus’s hands. “Just… don’t ask questions, and don’t tell your teammates.”

Rufus didn’t like this. His gut was coiling tight in a way that told him this… this was off. Mason wasn’t the secretive type, generally. He was too much of an egoist for that. Like most scientists the only time he wasn’t excitedly screaming about some new fun science thing he’d discovered was when he was trying to keep that new fun science thing a secret so he could get the patent in first. “Don’t ask questions? Connor…”

Mason gave him a stern look, the kind of look where he was trying to remind Rufus that he wasn’t just Rufus’s mentor, but his boss. “Just trust me on this, Rufus. Keep it to yourself.”

“Trust you? When you’re being this squirrely?”

Mason sighed, glancing around. “I’m asking you this—not to bring up any sore spots, but I put you through university, we’ve known each other for two decades now, I think we can safely say that I’ve earned the right to be a little reticent when I want to be, all right?”

Rufus wasn’t sure what to say to that. Mason was—he was a good guy, and he almost never brought up the whole paying Rufus’s way thing. He always said it made it sound like Rufus owed him a life debt or something, and he didn’t want Rufus to think of it like that, but now…

Whatever this was, it was serious.

“Yeah,” Rufus said, wondering what the hell Mason could be up to with this. “Yeah, no problem, Connor.”

* * *

Wyatt liked the team he was being placed with. Lucy Preston seemed a bit… young for the position. No offense, since they were, as she’d pointed out, literally the same age, but Wyatt was well aware he was just the muscle. Lucy was supposed to be the magic wielder of the group. Shouldn’t a more experienced witch be the one in charge? Rufus seemed all right too, although Wyatt wasn’t looking forward to having to protect a squishy defenseless human, but whatever.

None of them were probably coming back from this job anyway.

Wyatt’s nostrils flared as he took in the scents of the people around him. Lucy smelled like vanilla and cinnamon, and he tried to tune out the part of him that whined like an empty cavern when he looked at her, focusing instead of the thudding of her heart. She was nervous. Rufus was too, more so than Lucy—made sense. Lucy at least had magic to protect her, although a fat lot of good that had done for the witches Flynn had already murdered.

Two people to help him track down a murderous vampire in the middle of a bloodrage. Yeah. This would be a piece of cake, clearly.

Christopher held Wyatt back as the others left. “Logan.”

Wyatt quickly ducked his head down, dropping his gaze. Nobody else would’ve thought to do that, but then, Wyatt had always been very good at picking out the alphas around him.

The whole alpha-omega wolf thing was, generally, bullshit. Full stop. But there was the alpha pair who led the wolf pack, and they fought for that right, and in werewolves, you had the same kind of hierarchy. It wasn’t picking out some insane special scent and going _oh fuck, an Alpha_, and it wasn’t like alphas went around tearing people’s throats out and being all aggressive to prove their point. It was more like walking into a room and knowing who the leader on a team project was. If all the people on the project were werewolves and the team project was raising a bunch of baby werewolves—or in Wyatt’s case in the military, storming an enemy building.

“Christopher,” he said, keeping his eyes down.

Agent Christopher unfolded her arms, relaxing her posture enough that Wyatt felt he could look up without it being taken as a sign of challenge. Christopher’s eyes flashed momentarily yellow. Wolf yellow. “We’ve got a lot riding on this.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Witches had done a damn fine job of interweaving themselves into the human community, despite the whole ‘burn and hang them for hundreds of years’ thing. Vampires and werewolves, not so much. This Flynn could destroy everything that good people—people like Jess—had been working for.

“This is going to be a PR nightmare, no matter how we slice it.” Christopher kept her voice low, like she thought someone might be listening in. “I especially need you to do well in this. You know that this is a mission you might not return from.”

“Trust me, ma’am, that’s not a problem.”

“And the loss of your wife, that won’t be a problem?”

Wyatt grit his teeth. It was an entirely fair question to ask, given his nature, but it still grated. It grated even more knowing Christopher had a point, even if she didn’t know it. “No, ma’am, it won’t be.”

“Good. It’s important that we show the community… restraint. If possible, I want you to take Flynn down without transforming.”

“Wh—with all due respect, ma’am, fuck that. He’s a vampire in a blood lust, there’s no way—”

“You’re a highly trained operative, Master Sergeant, and just because you’re in human form doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten how to take a hit.” It was true, super strength was available to werewolves no matter which form they were in. Christopher raised an eyebrow. “I was encouraged to pick you because of your wife’s high-profile work as an advocate for our kind. If you are going to do anything that will… reinforce stereotypes about us, I need to know now so I can find someone else that will serve our goals better.”

“You’re talking about taking down a crazed psychopath,” Wyatt growled—an honest-to-God wolf growl. He was walking a fine line right now, and judging by how Christopher’s eyes started to glow yellow again, she was about ready to deliver a smackdown. “He killed his own family. How am I not supposed to use whatever force necessary to take him down? If I play by your rules and he escapes, how is that fair?”

“You’ll have to find a way to play by my rules and ensure he doesn’t escape,” Christopher said flatly.

“Jess would’ve wanted me to take down someone hurting people, she wouldn’t have given a damn if I got called a brute in the process. I don’t appreciate you using my wife against me, _ma’am_.”

“And I don’t appreciate your _tone_.” On the last word Christopher’s voice turned into a mangled, deepened growl, her suddenly sharpened teeth snapping.

Wyatt bared his throat, submitting, his blood running hot, his chest heaving. Christopher eyed him for a moment, then morphed back into her fully human form.

“You might not have anything to lose anymore,” she whispered, “but others do.”

“What, like you?”

Christopher winced, and Wyatt gave a triumphant grin, even knowing it might cost him. “Yeah, you’re not out, are you? How many of your teammates, your bosses, know you’re lupine?”

“And how many more missions are you going to get with ‘suicidal’ and ‘unstable transformations’ stamped onto your file?” Christopher shot back. “We’re all on thin ice, Logan. Do as I say. Show the world we’re not the bone-munching savages they say we are and keep your damn transformations under control. Or I will get you discharged from the military.”

“Sacrifice one for the sake of the many?”

Christopher’s jaw clenched. “For our people? Yes. You bet your ass.”

Wyatt glared at her, but in the back of his mind he could hear Jess’s voice, hear what she’d say. _She’s right, you can’t control yourself. It’s better to stay human._

“Yes ma’am,” Wyatt grumbled, and he finally shoved past Christopher and out into the hall.

* * *

Lucy could already see the headlines in her mind. _Princess Preston chosen to lead special task force._

Not that this would be in the papers until their inevitable success (and it had to be success, always success, a Preston settled for nothing less), but still. In time, it would end up in the news. Princess Preston struck again. Look at her go. The incredible magical wunderkid.

It made her sick.

“You okay?” Amy asked, pouring herself a glass of… some foul-smelling thing.

“That looks like a potion gone wrong.” Lucy dumped the pile of files that Agent Christopher had given her onto the kitchen counter.

“It’s just one of those healthy juices. Spinach and avocado and protein powder and carrots and beets, mmm!” Amy made a playful face at her and then began to choke the concoction down.

“Wake me when your health food kick is over and you’re back to your usual ice cream diet.”

Amy made a gagging noise as she finished off the drink. “It’s my compromise with Mom. I eat healthier and she stops nagging me about a career choice.”

Ah. She should’ve known. “Did she say anything about… me?”

“No, should she have?”

“Oh, Lucy, you’re back!” Mom hurried down the stairs. “How was it?”

“I can’t talk about it, it’s classified, you know that.”

“Good, good.” Carol nodded, eyeing the files. “But you’re excited? This is going to be important work for our community.”

“I mean, it’s fine.” She’d rather be doing what she actually loved instead of getting roped into chasing a serial killer so that she could show off her magic like a trick pony, but it was fine. She could handle this. “I just don’t understand why I was chosen, there are plenty of more esteemed witches out there—witches with actual battle magic, for one thing, not time magic. What am I supposed to do, shout history facts at this guy to defeat him?”

“Now, Lucy, you know that’s not all that your magic can do.”

It was true, but she didn’t want to use her magic that way, she didn’t want to be that kind of person. Witches weren’t inherently bad, magic wasn’t inherently bad, but all magic had its good and its bad sides and she wouldn’t—she couldn’t—she refused.

“Anyway, I’m sure they chose you for your magic, and this whole… different species working together idea, it’s half public relations, you know how it goes, darling.” Carol smiled brightly. “You were the natural choice!”

The natural choice for a project that was half-PR stunt. Great. Yeah.

Lucy looked at her younger sister. “Hey, does your health thing mean you can’t drink alcohol anymore?”

Amy grinned at her. “Hell no.”

Good, because Lucy needed a fucking drink.

* * *

Flynn stumbled into the room at the back of the small family pharmacy, his arm curled against himself, a gash in his side. Fuck, those last magical defenses—the family had known what they were doing, casting those. He’d gotten in, all right, but getting out had been a fucking nightmare.

Everything was red, red, so red—tinged all over like the world was soaked in blood. Fuck. He was thirsty, so very thirsty, it was burning him up and he had to quench it, if he could just—something warm and soothing and tangy and salty and sweet and—yes yes drink it all _kill _them all they’d killed his family his _girls _going to rip their throats out going to destroy them _monsters_ they’d made _him _a monster they’d—

“Easy now, Jesus, I swear you come back worse each time, boss.”

He all but crashed into the waiting chair, a single swinging bulb throwing grotesque shadows. _I hope you fucking sterilized your equipment, _he wanted to quip, but he wasn’t able to talk. All that came out was a dull snarl.

“Yeah, I know.” Something stung, pricked at his neck, he snarled again—felt something—not the warm sticky comfort in his throat that he wanted, but something cool in his veins, calming him, his vision began to clear—

Minutes, hours, days later, he blinked, and the room was in color.

“And he’s back.” Karl glared at him from the table where he was looking at a chart with readings. Flynn’s readings, he presumed. “Can you speak?”

“Fuck you,” Flynn managed.

“Good enough.” Karl put on a new pair of gloves and grabbed a small flashlight, walking over. He checked Flynn’s eyes, then took Flynn’s pulse and his temperature. “You really do come back worse each time.”

“Well, I have to give you something fun to do besides assist women in need.”

“The women who come to me are kind, desperate, scared people who need assistance. You are a fucking giant with a temper who gives me tips like he thinks he can be a doctor better than I can and that’s before we get into this nonsense.” Karl tapped his charts. “Your readings. Flynn. I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to do, for much longer.”

It wasn’t a surprise to hear, but it still twisted his insides. He hadn’t asked for this. He hadn’t wanted to become… this.

But goddammit, he would use it to get what vengeance he could. What _justice _he could. They made him a monster, what did they expect? That he would just go gentle into that good night?

If this ended up—if this took him, in the end, it didn’t matter. So long as his wife and daughter were avenged.

“Thank you, for your professional opinion.” He stood up, and his legs only wobbled a little bit. “I’ll take it into consideration.”

“Flynn, I’m serious.” Karl sounded exasperated, but that was nothing new. Karl always sounded exasperated. “This is a blood rage, this isn’t anything to scoff at. I know… I know that you think you can just power through. I understand that. But this isn’t—you can’t just ‘power through’ science. You can’t ignore gravity just because it’s inconvenient for you.”

“Watch me.”

Karl’s voice was clipped. “This will keep taking you over. Until you can’t come back. Until I can’t bring you back.”

Flynn left the money on the table, like always. “Then you’ll do what you have to.”

He knew Karl kept a stake in his pocket. Flynn had asked him to.

Karl muttered something, something undoubtedly insulting, but Flynn didn’t bother to try and hear it. He just walked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shamelessly admit that a lot of my fun inspirations for werewolf-vampire-etc behaviors were taken from various hilarious posts I found on tumblr over the past year and a half. Links to the posts, as I use their ideas, will be at the bottom of each chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

Lucy felt rather useless on this team.

She felt not so much like someone using her magic the way it was intended (she wasn’t, if you asked her, her magic was best for actually studying history, not going after blood raging lunatics) or like she was helping out her people, but like she was babysitting two actually useful people and then smiling for the inevitable cameras that were sure to spring up once they’d wrestled Flynn into custody.

Wrestling Flynn into custody was taking a lot more time than she would’ve liked, but then, Flynn had managed to keep his identity secret for months so she wasn’t surprised he was proving a tough guy to confront.

Rufus was necessary, and helpful. They were managing to gather a bit of footage and information on Flynn thanks to his reckless trail in the houses of the people he was attacking, and Rufus was able to draw up a creature profile on him. “I’m guessing he became a vampire shortly before attacking his wife and kid,” Rufus said. “He’s able to go out in sunlight, and that usually takes a couple of years.”

Only newly-born vampires got burned by sunlight. For other vampires it was more just an unpleasant thing. Vampire eyes weren’t made for daylight, just like human eyes weren’t made for darkness. They had to wear lots of sunscreen or layers out just in case something happened to their skin.

Wyatt was also necessary and helpful. With his tracking skills and strength, he was a good bet for taking down Flynn, although using another vampire would’ve been ideal. Good fucking luck on that front, though. The vampire community wasn’t too happy about this whole scenario. Lucy would’ve thought that they would jump at the chance to take down a vampire who was proving true the whole ‘bloodthirsty and dangerous’ stereotype, but no dice. Then again, the vampire community was rather insular and shadowy in the first place, so who even knew what was going on.

That just left her as the odd man out, the one who could only nod along and perhaps suggest how Flynn was getting through the magical defenses in people’s homes. Not really much compared to Rufus and his biology knowledge or Wyatt and his physical skills.

But at last, at last, they got a lead, and Lucy wasn’t about to stay back, even if she had no guarantee she’d be any use out in the field. She had magic, of a sort, and she was going to use it.

It wasn’t a lead, exactly. More like… more like a hunch, or a plan. If there was one thing that Lucy was good at, it was research. And she had researched, and researched, and fucking _researched_, and she was ninety percent sure that Flynn was going to hit the Cahills.

The Cahills were one of those upper-class blue blood families that had only come out as magical when things were starting to work in favor of witches, when public opinion had started to turn. Lucy didn’t appreciate that kind of behavior and neither had her mother—the few times Carol had mentioned Benjamin Cahill it had been with a rather dark look that had spoken of something personal and vengeful, and Lucy could only imagine that Carol, with her pro-witches crusading, had clashed a few times with Cahill over how to handle the whole witch business.

Lucy wasn’t… she didn’t think the Cahills deserved to die. Point blank. She wasn’t really sure that anyone deserved to die, and if they did, she didn’t really feel like she was the person who was qualified to make that call. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of playing at being a higher power in that way. So if she was right, if Flynn was going to attack the Cahills like she thought, she was going to stop him. Even if, maybe, in the darkest part of her heart, she felt like maybe the Cahills deserved to get scared shitless a little bit.

That wasn’t her call, though. Which was why she, Rufus, and Wyatt were at the Cahill residence, waiting, ready to strike at Flynn when—if—he arrived.

She really hoped he arrived, if only to prove that she was right, and not entirely fucking useless on this quest.

And, well, apparently Garcia Flynn didn’t like to disappoint, because around one in the morning one of the silent alarm spells that she’d set up—separate from the Cahills usual alarm spells—went off.

Lucy had been waiting in the upstairs hallway bathroom. Wyatt was downstairs in the office. Rufus was safely off scene in the car across the street, because Rufus was squishy and human.

She felt the alarm go off, making her finger twitch, the alarms spread out like an invisible cat’s cradle in her hands. Lucy took a deep breath.

Okay. One blood-rage-filled six-foot-four vampire invading the house with murderous intent. It was fine. She could handle this.

She slipped out of the closet, squinting in the dark. Fuck her stupid human vision. “Wyatt,” she whispered into her earpiece. Rufus was a biologist but he was damn good with tech as well—apparently he’d waffled between biology and computer science in college—and they all had these cool little earpieces with them. “He’s here.”

“I’m going to transform,” Wyatt whispered back. “Don’t be alarmed if there’s a giant wolf knocking around.”

“Funny, you don’t _look _like Benjamin Cahill.”

Lucy spun around and stared up into the red eyes of one Garcia Flynn.

“Funny,” she blurted out, not thinking, “but I thought the whole wearing black leather thing was a vampire myth.”

Flynn… gaped at her, like out of all the things he thought she’d say, that wasn’t it.

…to be fair it wasn’t what she’d thought she’d say either.

“You smell like a Cahill,” he snapped, sounding irritated and wrong-footed.

“And you smell like literal death,” Lucy snapped back.

This was hugely unprofessional of her, and she took a deep breath to say, _Garcia Flynn you are under arrest for…_ but didn’t get any farther than “Ga—” before a low growl sounded behind her.

Shit. That would be Wyatt.

Lucy dove to the side as Flynn’s eyes flashed, and Wyatt in the form of a fucking gigantic wolf launched himself at Flynn, front paws hitting him square in the chest. Flynn grabbed Wyatt’s throat just as Wyatt’s jaws went to snap around Flynn’s face, holding him off, and the two of them went flying backward.

Wyatt was heavy, and ferocious, and wild—but that was to his disadvantage. He was too wild, too rough, uncoordinated and messy. Flynn was clearly wild as well, snarling, fangs glinting fierce and white in the moonlight from the window, and Lucy had never seen a vampire in the middle of a bloodrage before but this was so much more than any actual vampire she’d ever seen, this was the sort of thing they told stories about to scare little children, claws and an unnatural waxen face of absolute unholy _fury_—and Wyatt was no match for it.

They scrabbled, claws ripping and rending flesh, Wyatt seizing Flynn’s shoulder in his teeth, Flynn sinking his fangs into Wyatt’s throat, the two of them rolling over and over in a ball of absolute fury. It was all Lucy could do to dive out of the way as they rolled, and tussled, and then Wyatt slipped up, overcompensated on a lunge, and Flynn used it to launch him through the window.

Glass shattered and Wyatt gave a distinctly puppyish yelp of surprise as he went out, crashing against the tree outside the window and then landing on the ground. Flynn snarled after him, then whipped around, fury and bloodlust writ clear on his face.

Lucy swallowed. It would be madness to step out of the shadows, to put herself between a bloodraging vampire and his prey.

She did it anyway.

Flynn took three long strides forward, registered her, and skidded to a halt. “Move,” he snarled.

“No.” Lucy planted her feet. She didn’t want to use her magic to hurt him but she would if she had to.

Flynn snarled at her, and all right, not going to lie, that was a bit intimidating, but she didn’t move. She just glared at him with everything in her. “Move,” he snapped, “or I will make you move.”

“_Try _it,” she shot back.

“Do you have any idea, what it’s taking not to kill you right now!? You _smell _like him. Like _Cahill_. Like _Rittenhouse_.”

“I smell like _witch_, and you’re out of your _mind_,” Lucy snapped. “What even is Rittenhouse!?”

“They’re the reason for all of this.”

“They’re the reason you’re murdering people? The reason you killed your fami—”

“I did not kill my family!” Flynn roared, a monster from the depths, a shadow given life. “Rittenhouse did. And now I will make them pay, no matter what you try, they deserve it—and if you don’t get out of my way—”

“You’ll what? You’ll rip my throat out like everyone else?” She wasn’t sure where this reckless bravery was coming from, just that there was something about Flynn that itched at her and made her—not angry, but _frustrated_. Irritated. She should’ve been scared, she knew that, but instead she just felt goddamn _pissed_. “Add me to your fun little tally?”

Rufus was squawking in her ear through the earpiece, and Wyatt was snarling at the front door, trying to get in, she heard him thudding against the downstairs windows—but if Flynn really did want to try and kill her, neither of them would get to her in time.

Flynn grabbed her arm. “This isn’t _fun_,” he spat. “You think I enjoy this? You think I sleep at night?”

Lucy grabbed him right back. “You’re not sleeping tonight, that’s for certain,” she replied, and she unleashed.

Flynn flinched, but didn’t cry out, which she supposed was admirable of him, as she dove, dove, _dove _into him, into his history, into all of his past, ripping through it to find the most painful, the most intimate—found—

_Lorena. Iris. _Those were their names, she found them, she found him checking Iris’s bedroom for monsters, she found him shyly asking Lorena out on a date, she found it and she yanked on it like strings until—

Flynn threw her to the side, not nearly as hard as he could have, sending her across the hallway to slam onto a couch, her ears ringing. She had seen the way he’d thrown Wyatt, the way he’d sunk his fangs in, and she knew she was getting off very, very lucky with just a toss onto a couch.

Flynn staggered back, his eyes no longer red, a queer sort of—was that a sob?—wringing out of him.

“I didn’t want to,” Lucy said, not even sure why she had. “I can’t let you hurt them.”

Flynn looked up at her, his face ashen and not just because of his vampiric nature, and he looked so tired all of a sudden, like he’d been a vampire for centuries instead of just a few years. There were tear tracks on his face.

She’d done that to him.

Lucy knew it was necessary, but she still hated herself for it.

“Rittenhouse,” Flynn rasped, his voice scraped up from the bottom of his chest. “You’ll see, Lucy Preston. I’m not your enemy.”

She thought, nonsensically, that Flynn’s real eye color was green.

He threw himself at the broken window and was gone.

* * *

“You want to tell me what that was?” Rufus asked, or, well, demanded, following Wyatt was Wyatt tore off the remnants of his clothes to make his way into the shower.

Of course a company like Mason’s that studied biology would have a convenient set of showers handy in the men’s restroom. And boy did Wyatt need one. He could smell it on himself still, the sweat and dirt and Flynn’s blood—and Wyatt’s own blood, too.

“What?” he grunted, turning on the water, hot as he could stand it.

Rufus stepped out of the way of the spray, eyeing Wyatt up and down like Wyatt was some kind of disease on a petri dish, something to be categorized and catalogued. “You nearly didn’t come out of your wolf form, dude. This is literally my job, I might not be a wolfy therapist or whatever but I know when a werewolf can’t shift.”

God forbid anyone ever care when a werewolf couldn’t go from human to wolf, but when it was the other way around, oh yeah, call the fucking presses. “Look, it’s not a problem.”

“Not a problem? What, you want to be stuck as a wolf your entire life?”

“It’s not like I’m going to be raging all the time.” Getting stuck in wolf form didn’t mean getting stuck as some bloodthirsty rage monster 24/7 for the rest of your life. It just meant… you were a wolf. Over time you forgot how to think entirely like a human. Those higher brain functions they just… it all went away. You were instinct. Hungry, happy, sleepy, sad. You were a wolf. End of story.

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Maybe it was better. To just forget—forget what he’d had and lost, forget all his failures, forget the past, forget all that he’d endured and all that he might have been if he’d just been… better.

Rufus folded his arms. “I’m not your psychologist so I’m not gonna touch that with a ten-foot pole but I am gonna tell you that you’re no good to us if you can’t transform one way or another. We need you to be yourself if we’ve got any hope of catching Flynn.”

“Yeah, because I was so close to having him against the ropes this time.” Wyatt scrubbed at his hair. Rufus passed him the shampoo.

“I’m serious. You need to be careful. Is it something—does your family have a predisposition—”

“It’s not genetic, Jesus.” Wyatt actually worked shampoo into his hair this time. “Look, you remember… _Percy Jackson_? The fifth—or was it the fourth? I think the fifth book, he does the Achilles thing, goes into the river and becomes invincible except for in one spot.”

“Uh, yeah.” Rufus squinted at him. “I didn’t think you were the type to read Percy Jackson and I gotta say, man, I like you a lot more now.”

“Fuck you,” Wyatt said, without heat. “Look, he had to think about something, that would keep that one part of him mortal, so he wouldn’t lose himself, right? And he thought about Annabeth. That’s what it’s like for us, when we transform. You need something that’s just so—something that can tie you to your human self. It… it can change, I guess, but…” He rinsed out his hair. “Mine was Jess.”

Jess who had burned so bright and bold. Jess who had been at the front of every damn protest march, Jess who had made signs and petitions and stood in Washington Square. Jess who had died, beaten and bloody.

“It was our, uh, our prom, back in high school. That night. We slow danced and my anchor was… was thinking about that night.” One of the few good memories of his hometown. They were almost all werewolves, which was great as far as not having to hide who he was, but shitty because they’d all stuck together like glue, an extended pack, and he’d had nowhere he felt he could turn when Dad was… he just hadn’t known. Sure, wolves were known for being good parents, really good parents, but there was always an exception and how were you supposed to tell your town that the man they all loved wasn’t the man they thought he was, at least not at home, not to his son?

What if he’d been the one run out of town? He couldn’t lose his pack. So he’d just… not said anything. And then he’d fucked off to the army since they were one of the places that would take a poor werewolf kid with shit grades, and Jess had gotten heavily into the civil rights movement, and that had been that.

Anyway.

“Can’t you… get a new anchor?” Rufus asked. He handed Wyatt a towel. Wyatt’s stomach growled and he grimaced. He needed to eat a lot, and fast. Transformations burned a fuckton of calories so a good werewolf tried to eat a lot before he transformed into a wolf, and then right after he transformed back into a human.

Wyatt wasn’t always the best at that. Just add it to the fucking list at this point.

“It’s not that simple,” he explained, nodding in thanks as Rufus handed him some fresh clothes. For most intentional turnings, the werewolf in question could shed their clothes ahead of time, but he didn’t really get that luxury when it came to Flynn so he just prepared to wear clothes he didn’t give shit about. “Your anchor is something really personal, really… you don’t just get to choose something.”

He wished he could choose. Not that he’d even know what to pick. But it wasn’t just like you could scroll through your memories and grab something. It had to be something really strong, almost instinctive, something that made you feel present, human, and _good_.

Wyatt didn’t have anything.

Rufus looked worried but didn’t say anything more about it. “There’s fresh coffee in the break room,” he said instead, and left Wyatt to it.

Wyatt wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask Rufus to stay or not. He and Rufus were teammates, not friends, really, but they almost could be, and God knew he could use a friend. But what would he say? _Hey stay with me because I’m lonely and pathetic?_

He just let Rufus go, and focused back in on toweling his hair, and figuring out where to get some food in him before he went feral over not having enough fucking pasta that morning.

* * *

She wasn’t aware she fell asleep on her books until Mom was shaking her awake. “Lucy? Sweetheart?”

Lucy jolted upright, just barely biting down on the _fuck you_ she was about to shout, although to whom she was planning on shouting it she couldn’t say.

(And if it was to a very tall annoying stack of trash named Garcia Flynn, well, she wouldn’t admit that for the world.)

“Sorry, I didn’t…” She rubbed at her eyes and realized she was still sitting at the kitchen table, books spread out around her. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Try to get some sleep, Lucy,” Mom said, and really, how did she always make that sound like an admonishment? As if she wasn’t the one pushing for Lucy to do her best on this mission, to show the world what witches could contribute.

“Of course,” she said instead, her smile stretching thin across her face, because she had to pick her battles and she couldn’t exactly avoid battling Flynn but she sure could avoid battling her mother for a little while.

Carol moved on to make her morning tea, and Lucy stared back down at her books. _Rittenhouse. _That was the name Flynn had given her. And he had seemed so… so full of conviction, like he was talking in absolutes, revealing a secret but fundamental truth. She couldn’t find it in herself to believe him a liar.

But if he was telling the truth, and he believed in the existence of this Rittenhouse…

Why couldn’t she find any sign of it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr posts that I shamelessly stole ideas from, which are referenced in this chapter:
> 
> https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/179780093023/what-if-the-sun-doesnt-actually-hurt  
https://spiritsflame.tumblr.com/post/180572741884/biggest-gaudiest-patronuses


	3. Chapter 3

Lucy rubbed at her temples, more books in front of her than she knew what to do with—and none of them helping her in the slightest.

“That’s your eighth cup of tea,” Amy noted, walking past her to take said tea mug off the table. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just…” Lucy blew out her breath in frustration. “I’m trying to figure out what this stupid person or thing is and I can’t find anything on it.”

“Does it have to do with your work? Can you tell me about it?” Amy leaned on the table, looking at the books spread out and open, stuffed with bookmarks.

“I probably shouldn’t, but…” She couldn’t do research on Rittenhouse and track down Flynn, not both. She didn’t have the time. “Do you think you could…?” She looked up at Amy. “Could you try researching a name? Rittenhouse? All I’m coming up with is a Founding Father from the Revolutionary War and he wasn’t one of the big ones, either. He was into clockmaking, apparently. But nothing—nothing that would make him significant today.”

Amy frowned. “Rittenhouse? Yeah, sure, I can look into it. Any particular area?”

“Witches and vampires.”

“And any particular reason you’re looking into this? Does this have to do with our resident serial killer?”

“His name is Flynn,” Lucy said, and she surprised herself with the bite in her voice. It wasn’t Amy’s fault that she thought of Flynn that way. Lucy had thought of him that way, too, until she’d seen and felt his past.

That was the exchange. She saw the past, but the past also saw her. She felt it, like she was there. She _felt _Flynn’s painful, burning bright joy in his family, felt the aching chasm of his sorrow at their loss, the way the memory of them was both beautiful and vicious in the reminder of what he’d had and lost.

“Flynn,” Amy repeated, her voice soft.

Lucy got up. “I have to go, actually. We have to meet up. Um…” She looked at the mess on the table.

“I’ll clean it up,” Amy said. “You go, it’s fine.” She smiled to show that she meant it.

Lucy nodded, kissed her sister on the cheek, and hurried out.

* * *

She’d—she’d yanked him out of it. The blood rage.

It had taken everything in Flynn to keep himself from killing Lucy Preston where she’d stood. He could smell it in her blood, _Cahill Cahill Cahill Rittenhouse Rittenhouse Rittenhouse_, a ferocious chant and he’d wanted to kill her so very badly, but he wasn’t—he couldn’t do that. She wasn’t mixed up in this. Not so far as he knew. And her confusion when he’d said the name Rittenhouse spoke volumes.

He’d tried to just move her out of the way, and it had turned into a toss, and fuck, he had been so out of control, seeing nothing but red, like the walls were just drenched in blood, buckets of it, the floor too, and he wanted _death_. And then she’d grabbed him—grabbed him and somehow—he hadn’t been in the present anymore. He’d been in the past, he’d been—with his daughter.

_I’ll always protect you._

He’d been with Lorena. _I’ve been waiting for you to ask me for months, Garcia, yes I’m free on Friday._

The rage had just—been sapped from him like it was nothing and instead he’d just wanted to curl up into a ball and, humiliatingly, cry.

So he’d fled instead.

“Yeah,” Karl confirmed, after running his tests. “Your vitals are all normal. Whatever the hell that witch did to you, she shoved the blood rage right out of you.”

“Will it come back?”

Karl winced. “Normally…” He took off his gloves and threw them into the trash. “You’re not a normal case, Flynn. Blood rages are supposed to be triggered by emotion. Like when a werewolf transforms angry and hungry. This… isn’t. This is… biological.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Flynn muttered.

“Yeah, it’ll come back, long story short. Unless you can get someone to actually get a cure to get rid of the damn virus in you, it’s always going to come back.” Karl began cleaning up his workspace. “I’ll keep doing what I can but I’m not that kind of doctor. You need an actual biologist, someone who’s trained in how to recognize and deal with these diseases on molecular level, not someone who’s just got training in things like supernatural pregnancies. I can treat it best I can but I can’t _stop _it. And that’s what you need. But for now?” Karl shrugged. “See if you can get that witch to work her magic on you again. Because she did better work than my medicine’s been.”

Flynn tried not to think about that as he headed for his next target. He had to keep his eyes on the prize, and the prize was destroying the coven of witches that had done this to him, murdered his family and pumped him full of this—this disease. Signed his death warrant and the demise of the entire vampire community, making him the scapegoat. No one, not even Lucy Preston with her dark eyes and her strange magic, could keep him from his goal. Too much was riding on it.

Even if he was giving up his soul in the process.

He could feel the blood rage taking him over as he neatly worked his way through the magical alarms. He wasn’t a witch but he wasn’t an idiot, either, and nonmagical people could learn how to disable a few damn spells if they only had some patience and used their heads. Red was seeping into his vision and his coordination was starting to go down. He could only smell blood, hear blood, blood, blood, _blood_, he had to _feed…_

A vicious snarl caught him by surprise and he felt pain explode in his side as a pair of werewolf jaws snapped around his torso.

They went flying to the side and Flynn sank his claws into the werewolf’s side, tearing at his shoulders and back, snarling, _blood blood blood_, feeling nothing but fury. The werewolf, he recognized the smell of him, he was more prepared this time to take Flynn on, dodging when Flynn tried to flip him, planting his weight, and if nothing else this was getting the energy out of him.

He was furious, feeling robbed, how dare this creature take him away from his goal, keep him from feeding, sating his bloodlust. He wanted to kill, was fighting to rip flesh from bone, and he could feel it—could feel that he was the better fighter. Maybe not really the stronger, but the smarter, certainly. He was going to win this, even as claws and teeth literally tore stripes down his back, his arms, as they rolled and rolled, he was going to _win—_

Hands, small hands on him again, firm, and he was plunged back, his wedding day, _Lorena, _Iris’s birth, holding her so small and helpless in his arms, being human, going swimming in the ocean off the Croatian coast and needing to breathe because he was _human _and needed oxygen—

Flynn staggered to his knees.

Lucy, Lucy Preston, was still holding onto him. “I’m sorry.” She sounded upset. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to, I had to, I’m sorry, I know it’s wrong.”

He slumped to the side, against her, his head on her shoulder, and he hadn’t meant to. He tried to speak, but the bloodrage was gone and he was now painfully aware of how weak he was, of the blood leaking out of him from what felt like everywhere.

“He needs blood,” someone was saying, a man. “He needs blood or he’ll die.”

“What are you looking at me for!?” someone else, another man, said.

“Your blood is stronger, you’re a werewolf—”

“I just got ripped up too, Rufus, in case you didn’t notice—”

“Shut up, both of you!” Lucy.

His mouth was pressed to a warm, slight neck, and he tried to turn away because something in him said it was wrong, still, that he shouldn’t—he was a monster—and not from her, he wouldn’t—

“You need this, it’s okay.” Her voice was gentle, which was more than he figured he deserved. “Go on, it’s okay.”

He was too tired to fight her, and he sank his fangs into her neck, warmth and life spilling out and exploding into his mouth.

* * *

_Jess, Jess is smiling, she’s in his arms and the lights are low, Stairway to Heaven of all ridiculous songs is playing but he doesn’t care, he’s happy and with Jess and soon they’re both getting out of this stupid small town…_

_Jess is smiling…_

_Jess is bloody…_

_She’s bloody, she’s dead, her body is cold, so cold, bruised, stiff, lying there…_

Wyatt gasped, his heart thumping painfully loud in his ears, pain ripping through his chest. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_, everything hurt, his limbs shrinking and contorting back, muscle and sinew rearranging, he could _hear _the crack and snap of his bones as he shifted back to human form.

“Easy, buddy, easy,” Rufus gently patted his back and Wyatt sucked in lungfuls of air that felt like fire.

Shit, that had been way too painful, way too slow. The transformation was supposed to be fast, seamless, smooth. You latched onto your anchor and dropped into human form. Or you released your emotions and surged up into wolf form. Not this, not—not like his. He was acting like a bitten wolf on his first damn full moon.

“Wyatt!” It was Lucy. “Help, are you okay? Come here!”

Wyatt staggered to his feet. Now that he was human again he was fucking starving but otherwise… he looked down at himself. His cuts and bruises from Flynn’s fangs were healing. Self-regeneration in vampires and werewolves wasn’t an exact science but it was damn helpful.

Fuck, he still felt like—like he was only half human. Half of his brain online, the other showing _Error 404 Page Not Found_. Shit. Snap out of it, man, c'mon. He had to be better than this, Jess would've been better than this.

Wyatt looked over at Lucy and did a double take.

“Get off her!” he growled, lurching forward—only for Lucy to hold up a hand.

“Stop,” she said, her voice soft, pleading. “It’s okay, I made him.”

Flynn was slumped to the ground, drinking slowly from Lucy’s neck. Lucy was sitting, half-cradling him, trying to support him despite his much larger frame and weight. He had to be heavy on her, especially on her one leg that was trapped underneath him.

“He was dying,” Lucy whispered.

Rufus cleared his throat. “I’m going to, um, check on the family.” He nodded and entered the house.

Wyatt glanced around. They were in the backyard, Lucy slumped back against the back wall of the house, bits of grass and dirt sticking to her. Nobody could see them, but even if a neighbor heard the commotion and chose to look, it was hard to see into the shadows cast by the upper story of the house.

He walked over as Lucy had requested. Her pupils were blown and her breathing was odd.

Flynn moved, biting down a little harder, and Lucy made a small noise, her eyelids fluttering. Oh. _Oh_.

He doubted, given Flynn’s near-death state—fuck, his body wasn’t naturally healing, all the cuts and bites from Wyatt’s jaws were still wide open, gashes down Flynn’s chest, arms, and back—that Flynn was intending this. And Wyatt had personally never seen it before, but… a vampire bite, when the person being bitten was willing and offered it, could be, well… or so he’d heard…

“I can’t give him as much as he needs,” Lucy said, and fuck, _fuck_, now that he knew what he was looking at he could see it plainly, hear it in her voice, her tone thick like honey, her face flushed, chest fluttering. “Werewolf blood, it’s—it’s stronger—my magic, in my blood, I don’t know if it’s helping him or hurting him but you—”

“We really want to save this guy?” He had to ask. Christopher had made it clear that they preferred Flynn alive and Wyatt was supposed to take the guy down without being transformed but… was it worth all the trouble?

Lucy made another small noise, shuddering, and Wyatt forced himself to look away. This wasn’t—he wasn’t supposed to see her like that. She wouldn’t want to see him like that.

The image, though, before he stopped looking, the sounds she made, the way her mouth parted on a gasp… that was staying with him for a long, long time.

“Yes,” Lucy said, her voice steady. “There’s something… I can’t explain it, really, call it instinct, but there’s something going on here and I want to get to the bottom of it and I can’t do it if Flynn is dead. Think about it—why do our superiors, why are they pushing so hard on this? Why is he still in a bloodrage after two years, why all the time, those aren’t easy to sustain. Why is he attacking these families?”

She did have a point. Wyatt had been wondering about those things himself, and then telling himself he wasn’t paid to think about those things.

“He said that someone else made him into this, that someone else is the cause of this,” Lucy whispered. “And I believe him.”

Wyatt dared to glance back at her and noticed she was starting to look pale.

“Now.” A fierce look came into Lucy’s gaze. “I’ll feed him if I have to, but if I get drained of blood because of it and faint, you’re carrying both him and me back to base.”

Wyatt shook his head. No way she would survive much more blood being taken. “Here, no, let me.”

He sat down on Flynn’s other side, making himself comfortable in the dirt, and helped Lucy to gently pull Flynn away from her. Flynn made a gasping, wet noise, something between a cry for help and a growl of frustration, and Lucy turned him.

“Here, here,” she said. “It’s okay, here.”

Wyatt craned his neck back and tried to swallow the panic. He could still feel the wolf lurking just underneath his skin, like he was only ninety percent transformed, and he didn’t know how that side of him would react to a vampire feeding on him.

Flynn’s fangs sank in, and Wyatt’s body jerked. There was the initial sting, and then—then—

…it was really inconvenient that his clothes were all torn up right about now.

He was dimly aware of Lucy checking over Flynn’s body, investigating the cuts and the outright bleeding gash in his side from where Wyatt had torn a chunk out of him, but mostly all he could feel was bliss. It felt good, so good, and he tried to keep his thoughts under control but they were all slipping away from him faster than eels.

At some point Flynn gained back enough consciousness to move on his own, to brace his hand in the dirt by Wyatt’s thigh and adjust to get a better hold on Wyatt’s neck, and Wyatt just fucking melted. He really, really hoped Lucy wasn’t watching because he could practically feel his eyes rolling back into his head and he was aching in that telltale way and if Flynn didn’t stop—oh _fuck_.

Wyatt managed to glance to the side and saw that Lucy was wincing at the big gash in Flynn’s torso, a gash that was now slowly, painfully, but steadily knitting itself back together. Wyatt quickly pressed the heel of his hand between his legs, biting down so hard on his lip he drew blood as his hips jerked.

Lucy stood up and hurried over to the front door. “Rufus, are you okay? What’s taking so long?”

Wyatt was so fucking glad she wasn’t watching as he fell off the cliff over a goddamn vampire (that he’d been trying to kill twenty minutes ago and who had been perfectly happy to try and kill him) sucking the world’s worst hickey into his neck.

Lucy returned with Rufus. “I think he’s had enough to stabilize,” Rufus noted.

Thank God, because Wyatt was now in that floaty-bliss stage and if this went on much longer he was going to be literally useless.

Lucy crouched onto her knees and took Flynn’s shoulder. Flynn gave a small noise, not as desperate as the one before, and retracted his fangs, lapping at the spot with his tongue to seal up the holes and Wyatt bit down on his tongue so hard to keep quiet that for a second he feared he’d bit it in half.

“Christopher’s going to be pleased,” Rufus noted, helping Lucy get Flynn to his feet.

Wyatt staggered to his feet as well, nearly fell over, and braced himself against the wall. Thank fuck for the mud and blood caking his body, hiding the, ah, more embarrassing evidence of what had just happened. Please, please, to whatever deity was out there—please let Flynn not realize that he accidentally just made Wyatt orgasm just from sucking his blood. He would never hear the end of it if word got out.

Lucy and Rufus didn’t seem aware, either. They were focused on Flynn.

Wyatt shook out his limbs. Huh. He felt… maybe it was just y’know his first orgasm in four years that didn’t come from his own hand, but he felt really, really calm. Like the wolf inside of him was finally sleeping after years of pacing up and down like it was in a cage, and a too-small cage at that.

It was probably nothing.

“Help me get him to the car,” Lucy said, and Wyatt darted forward to follow her lead.

* * *

Wyatt had to put on his spare clothes, given that his were now bloodstained and torn all over, and Lucy had to call Agent Christopher, so Rufus took care of settling Flynn into the car.

He had the tools. He was all alone with Flynn. He could get the sample of his blood, easy. Nobody would know.

But why? Why was it needed? Why take it secretively, without anyone knowing?

And why was Flynn in a bloodrage? How had he sustained it for two whole damn years? How had he not _died _yet?

His instincts were on red alert, alarms screaming, and he couldn’t… he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t going to go behind the backs of Lucy and Wyatt, who had both put their lives on the line, right in the path of a rampaging vampire, and he wasn’t going to do something when he didn’t know what the consequences of doing it were.

Instead, once he finished with Flynn, he called Mason. Flynn would be asleep for a while yet, healing slowly. In fact, the guy was completely out, like the dead.

Ha. Ha. The dead.

Mason picked up after one ring. “Did you get it?”

Rufus glanced around. Lucy had finished speaking with Christopher and was now listening to a voicemail. Wyatt was picking grass out of his hair and wincing at his reflection in the side view mirror of the car.

“No,” Rufus told him. “And I’m not going to. Not until you actually tell me what’s going on. This isn’t right, Connor. I don’t know why, but it’s not. I know that you’re keeping some important shit from me. I trust you, but I know you, and I know when you’re doing something—something stupid. What did you get yourself mixed into? What did you get _me _mixed into?”

There was a long, long pause on the other end of the line. Lucy finished listening to her voicemail and placed another call. Wyatt grabbed tissues from the glove compartment and started wiping up his thighs and chest, getting the blood off.

“Rufus,” Mason said, “I’m only going to say this once. I have some people who want that blood very badly. And it’s best not to cross them. I would… I would be careful, Rufus. I want you safe. I want your family safe.”

“My family? Connor, who are these people?”

“They call themselves Rittenhouse. That’s all I can tell you. Just—do as I say, and get the sample, and everything will be fine. I can’t tell you more, for your own safety. All right?”

Rufus swallowed. “Connor…”

Outside the car, Lucy let out a scream.

* * *

Lucy called Christopher and explained the situation.

Well, most of it.

She left out the part where she’d gotten more turned on just from Flynn feeding off her blood than she had from actual goddamn sex in the last decade.

At least her humiliation had been shared. If Wyatt thought he’d gotten away with hiding his own reaction to Flynn feeding on him, well, he had another thing coming. Lucy had gotten up and walked away to ‘find’ Rufus when she’d seen the situation reaching its inevitable climax—no pun intended—but she knew full well what had gone down, just as she knew that Wyatt had seen what was happening with her. If she’d been able to touch herself at all, get any kind of action there, she would’ve lost it too.

She hoped to God that Flynn wouldn’t know about that, hadn’t noticed it, and she was determined that she and Wyatt would never, ever speak about it. Ever.

Agent Christopher was pleased to hear that they had him. “Was letting him feed on you wise?”

“He was nearly dead. And it wasn’t from Wyatt.” No offense, but she’d seen Wyatt and Flynn fight twice now and she could tell who the better fighter was. “He’s still in a bloodrage and it’s draining him. It’s like a cancer or disease or something. His body can’t possibly sustain it. He wasn’t healing properly on his own and he needed so much blood, Christopher. Way more than he should have.” He’d drunk from Lucy until she was woozy and lightheaded, and Wyatt had nearly fallen down the moment he’d stood up after Flynn had finished with him. She couldn’t blame that on just their arousal. She’d had sex before and she’d passed out before and she knew the damn difference.

Agent Christopher made a noncommittal noise. “All right. Bring him in, but be careful. I don’t want you all getting hurt.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m proud of you three for capturing him. We want this done right, through the right channels.”

“Of course.”

“And I’m sure everyone else in the community will sleep a little easier now.”

“Right.” Like Flynn had been targeting everyone, when really he’d just been targeting a few powerful, wealthy families. Lucy couldn’t shake the nauseous feeling in her stomach that something was very wrong about all this.

“See you soon,” Agent Christopher said, and then the line went dead.

Lucy brought the phone down, glancing at Wyatt and Rufus. Wyatt was cleaning himself up, wiping away the blood, and Rufus was talking quietly with someone on the phone.

She decided to listen to Amy’s voicemail. Her sister had left it for her while they were fighting Flynn.

_Hey, Luce! So I looked into Rittenhouse, and don’t tell Mom this but I totally swiped her access card to get into Stanford’s restricted archives. Yeah, yeah, yell at me later. Get this, Rittenhouse is the name of an old coven that dates back to before the Revolutionary War. I think that one guy you found, David Rittenhouse, was a part of it, either he founded it or an ancestor did or something? Anyway, I’m making photocopies of the files now, so I—hey!_

Amy’s voice shifted into alarm and anger.

_Hey, the fuck? Hey—stop—stop it, you motherfu—_

Lucy’s heart skipped a beat, her breath stopping in her chest, as Amy let out a scream of pain.

The voicemail ended.

Her fingers shaking, she dialed Amy’s number. C’mon, c’mon…

It went to voicemail.

_Hello, you’ve reached Amy Preston. You know what to do._

She tried again, just in case.

_Hello, you’ve reached Amy Preston. You know what to do._

She called Mom.

“Lucy?” Carol sounded like she’d been woken up, and given that it was… fifteen minutes past midnight, she probably had been. “Everything okay?”

“Is Amy with you?” Lucy asked in a rush.

“Mmm, she should be…”

“She’s not answering her phone, I need you—please—please check her room.”

There was the sound of movement and rustling, and then Carol said, “Honestly, honey, she’s probably—oh my God.”

Lucy’s heart plummeted.

“Ah.” Carol sounded shaken, which was rare. Lucy could count on one hand the times her mother had sounded anything other than poised and ironclad. “I—I think someone’s broken into—ransacked Amy’s room.”

Fury and fear building up between her teeth, behind her eyes, Lucy let out a scream.

* * *

They called Christopher immediately. Wyatt was driving, Rufus was in the back with Flynn.

“This isn’t right,” Lucy said as she finished explaining. “There’s something more going on here and now—now my sister’s been taken because I asked her to look into it, and Flynn—Flynn was right, and I think he’s being set up as a scapegoat—”

“Rittenhouse is real, all right,” Rufus interjected. “They’ve got my boss in a bind and they want a sample of Flynn’s blood. I think they threatened to hurt me and my family if Connor didn’t do as they asked.”

“I’m sending you to a safehouse,” Agent Christopher said, her voice crisp. “I’ll have Jiya send you an encrypted message, Rufus. I assume she’s a safe liaison to choose? Obviously I can’t trust my own people, and we can’t trust other witches if this is a coven.”

“Anyone who had a hand in setting up this task force is a suspect,” Lucy said, surprised by the conviction in her tone. She didn’t recognize her own voice.

“Jiya’s trustworthy,” Rufus said, answering Christopher’s question.

“Wyatt?”

Wyatt perked up, like a dog that heard its master calling. “Yes?”

“I assume I can trust you to protect the others?”

“Ma’am, they’ll be my pack for the duration.”

Pack, family, was everything to werewolves. Lucy didn’t know much about them, but even she knew that. She mouthed _thank you _at Wyatt. After all, he wasn’t the one who’d lost a sister, or had himself and his family threatened.

“What about Flynn?” she asked.

“You said in your last meeting that you think you got the bloodrage to retreat for a while,” Christopher replied. “I think he’s best left in your hands, and out of anyone else’s. See what information you can get out of him. But be careful. He’s an asset, not an ally.”

“Understood,” Wyatt said.

“All right,” Lucy said.

“Got the directions,” Rufus said as he fiddled around on his phone. “Wyatt, I’ll guide you.”

“Let me know when you get there safely,” Denise said. “And remember—don’t draw attention to yourselves.”

She hung up.

“A bloodraging vampire, a werewolf who can barely control his transformations, a witch, and squishy little me,” Rufus muttered. “Oh yeah. We’re going to have no problem staying under the radar.”

Lucy couldn’t help but agree. This mission had just taken a severe left turn, and she had no idea how it would end now.

Hopefully for the better.


	4. Chapter 4

_Rufus is standing in a kitchen, hissing in pain._

_“Here, let me.” A tall man takes Rufus’s arm. “You couldn’t have—”_

_“Don’t eat him!”_

_“I’m not gonna eat him, Wyatt, for fuck’s sake—I’m gonna bandage it. Like a normal person.”_

_“There is nothing normal about you.”_

_“Could you two maybe have your pissing contest after we stop my arm from bleeding?” Rufus snaps. “Thanks.”_

Jiya woke up in a sweat.

Her head throbbed and she rolled over to stare at her bedside clock. 2:30 A.M.

That was the weirdest dream. Or, not a dream, but, something. She’d been able to see it all so clearly. Rufus had been standing in this kitchen that she’d never seen before, and the air—she could smell it, feel it—had felt stale. He’d had a cut on his hand, a knife and tomatoes in front of him. Making toppings for a burger.

Why would she have a dream like that about Rufus?

Dreaming about Rufus himself, that wasn’t so weird. They’d been dancing around a… a thing between them for some time now and Jiya had been tearing her hair out wondering if she should make a move or not.

Now it was looking like she’d missed her chance.

Rufus was holed up in a safehouse of some kind, a bunker on the edge of Mt. Diablo, close enough to Clayton that one of them could run out and get supplies and food when they ran out, but far enough away from major cities that they could lay low until Denise thought of a more permanent plan. With him was a witch, a werewolf, and a vampire.

Jiya did not have high hopes for the four of them getting along.

And who knew how long he would be there. Who knew how long they’d have to wait it out until they could get to the bottom of this weird Rittenhouse issue. Denise was running interference but that was only going to work for so long. And Jiya was more worried about Rufus than she would have liked to admit out loud.

Should she call him? See if he was all right? But no—it wasn’t like she’d dreamed about him dying or something. She’d had a weird dream about a cut, that was all. It was just her odd form of paranoia getting to her.

She took a couple pills for the headache that persisted as a dull throbbing behind her eyebrows, drank a glass of water, and went back to sleep.

* * *

Flynn woke up to weak sunlight filtering in through a gap in the window curtains.

Contrary to popular belief, vampires could go out in sunlight after the first couple of years. It wasn’t fun, really, since their eyes weren’t built for sunlight, but they could do it. Technically the sunlight could still burn their skin painfully easily, but with enough layers and sunscreen, it was manageable. Manageable enough that most vampires tolerated it in order to pass as human.

He blinked a few times, the room swimming into focus. He was underground, in a bunker of some kind. He could smell it—the stale air, the earth. And there were others. He could hear their heartbeats, two of them calling to him, although it took him a moment to realize why.

Lucy and Wyatt. He’d fed off them, and recently. He was somewhat attuned to them now. Or would be for a little bit, until their blood had worked its way through his system.

One of them had a naturally slower heartbeat. That had to be Wyatt, since he was bigger. It was still beating oddly, though, an unnatural rhythm. Wyatt was upset about something.

Lucy’s heartbeat was rapid, but steadier.

Rufus’s, Flynn couldn’t quite tell.

He groaned, sitting upright. Fuck. He felt like his chest had been ripped open. They had seen him—seen him in his most vulnerable state. He couldn’t recall much of last night, but he did know he’d nearly died. Lucy had ripped the bloodrage out of him again, temporarily, and he’d been so weak he’d had to feed from her and Wyatt to survive. He must’ve been like a newborn vampire, a child, feeding mindlessly. He supposed he was lucky they hadn’t killed him but he almost wished that they had just so that he wouldn’t have to endure the humiliation of looking them in the eye this morning.

Flynn heaved himself up out of bed and then nearly fell backward, yelling in alarm.

The door was yanked open and Lucy burst in. “What!?” she asked.

Flynn stared at her, then looked across the room again—at the mirror hanging over the dresser.

It was just his reflection.

“Nothing,” he said curtly.

Mirrors used to be backed with silver, which was why vampires had been unable for centuries to see their reflection in them. Nowadays they were backed by aluminum. Or at least some of them were. It was a fifty-fifty chance on getting to see his reflection in any given mirror, and he’d just, humiliatingly, scared himself.

Lucy glanced at the mirror, then at Flynn, but didn’t say anything. “Do you, um, need…?” She tilted her head, exposing her neck a bit.

Flynn tried not to remember the way she’d tasted, the sweet hot honey of her blood in his mouth, the way it had only gotten sweeter as he’d fed on her, like steadily mixing more sugar into a drink. His head had been spinning with the taste of her, and it wasn’t just because he’d needed to feed or die.

“I’m fine,” he said shortly. More shortly than, perhaps, she deserved. She had saved him, after all. He supposed that warranted some… politeness.

“We’re stuck here,” Lucy said. “We’re in a… a bunker of some kind. Denise put us here to keep us safe from Rittenhouse while she figures out what’s going on.”

“Denise?”

“Agent Christopher. She’s with Homeland Security. She’s… she’s a good person.” Lucy paused. “Perhaps you could tell me what Rittenhouse is? What you know of them?”

“I’m not sure I should,” Flynn replied. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? That this isn’t some kind of setup?”

“Oh, because we just voluntarily shackled ourselves to this bunker and you for the fun of it,” Wyatt grumbled.

Obviously with his supernatural hearing, Wyatt was listening in. “I have super hearing too, asshole,” Flynn snapped back.

Wyatt’s heartbeat spiked. Flynn couldn’t resist a grim smile of satisfaction.

He could remember what Wyatt tasted like, too. Cloves and cinnamon, a little spicier because of the werewolf genes, but also growing steadily sweeter until he’d exploded on Flynn’s tongue, making Flynn drink greedily, making him think of ambrosia.

“You’re welcome to come out and see,” Lucy said. “You have free reign of the bunker, and the surrounding woods. You and Wyatt will need… exercise.”

“And you’re not scared of being cooped up with a bloodraging vampire?” Flynn gave her a sharp, mocking smile and a bow.

Lucy raised her chin. “No. Because I can stop you.”

It was true—she had stopped him, twice. Flynn shuddered at the memory, his smile sliding away. What had Lucy seen? Had she seen what she was drawing out of him, those memories?

She had no right to them. Those were his.

Lucy dropped her gaze, looking abashed. “I’m sorry I had to do that. Now, could you… could you please come join us in the kitchen? You can tells us about Rittenhouse. We want—we want to stop whatever… whoever the real bad guy is.”

Flynn could hear her heartbeat kicking up, the scent of her sharpening. Fear, but not of him. “What happened.”

Lucy swallowed, and he could see her pulse thrumming in her neck. “Rittenhouse took my sister.”

…ah.

* * *

Wyatt paced back and forth, refusing to look at Flynn as the vampire sat down. Fucking fuck. He was stuck in a bunker for who knew how long with a vampire, with _that _vampire, the vampire that had—

Nope, no, nope, not going there, definitely not, this was not happening. He wasn’t going to—that was a fluke, a one time thing, he hadn’t had sex in four years and it was a freaky vampire power thing that was _it_.

God, he wanted to get out and run. The size of the bunker, and the few people in it, was driving him nuts.

The whole ‘lone wolf’ thing was a fucking myth, okay? Werewolves needed a _pack_. A big one. Werewolves had multigenerational homes. Wyatt’s entire town had been his pack, they all looked out for each other, they puppy piled, he was touched constantly, someone always had his back. In W Force he had Bam Bam and a dozen other people to cuddle at night and to wrestle with. He wasn’t used to—to just three people, none of whom he could touch. At least after Jess he still had his task force. Now he had no one. Just Lucy, and Rufus, and fucking _Flynn_.

Flynn, who was sitting placidly, if crankily, at the table and looking completely, annoyingly normal. If someone had pointed that guy out and said he was a vampire, Wyatt wouldn’t have believed them. He looked completely different from the raging, foaming at the mouth monster of the night that Wyatt had wrestled the night before, and also completely different from the mindless, desperate creature who’d had to suck both Lucy and Wyatt nearly dry to survive.

Now he was just sitting there in a soft black turtleneck and dark jeans. Looking handsome. Fuck him.

“Could you stop pacing?” Rufus asked.

Wyatt knew it was childish, but he let a bit of his wolf peek out, let the fangs and the yellow of his eyes show.

Flynn rolled his eyes. “Stop flashing those. It wasn’t scary the first time.”

Wyatt flipped him off.

“Tell us about Rittenhouse,” Lucy said, sending a quelling look in Wyatt’s direction, and something in him sat the fuck down and _whined _like a dog told to stop chewing the shoes.

Shit.

Flynn sat back in his chair and propped his feet up onto the table. He smirked when Lucy leveled a glare at him for it. “Rittenhouse is a coven that believes magic gives witches supremacy over other races. And that vampires and werewolves are even less than human. That they have to be controlled and should be controlled.”

That made Wyatt pay attention. This kind of thinking—that werewolves were nothing but brutes—that Jess had dedicated her life to fighting against.

“I used to work for the NSA, especially in the supernatural liaison department. My… my mother’s first husband was a vampire.” Something painful and intimate flashed across Flynn’s face, and then he was back to being all business. “I was asked by a friend to look into Connor Mason’s financials, and I found that name, Rittenhouse. I had never heard of it before, and I asked my friend about it. Next thing I knew—these people were invading my house.”

Flynn’s voice was rough. Furious. Raw. “They had magic, and I couldn’t fight them. They injected me with—with something, some virus, and they killed my family. My girls. Made it look like I did it. They turned me into… into this.” He gestured at himself. “Their one mistake was thinking they could contain a bloodraging vampire. I got out, went on the run. Been on the run for two years, trying to figure out what to do.”

“And you decided to kill people,” Wyatt said.

“I decided to take down the murderers who killed my family,” Flynn snarled, his eyes flashing red. “I can’t shake this bloodrage. It’s what they did to me, they—they did something, made it so it’s a part of me. I can’t shake it. Every time, it comes back. It’s going to kill me. It’s like a disease in me. But I can use it. I can make them pay.”

Wyatt saw a flicker of… sympathy, or pain, something, flicker across Lucy’s face, and his heart ached in a peculiar way.

“And now they’ll be after you all, too,” Flynn added. “Because you didn’t kill me. Or bring me into them.”

“They’re already after us,” Lucy said. Her voice was quiet. “I asked… I asked my sister to look into Rittenhouse, after you told me the name. She—she’s gone. They took her.”

For the first time, Wyatt saw Flynn look contrite. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention…”

“Save it.” Lucy didn’t sound vindictive or angry, just tired.

“Then why are we here?” Flynn asked. Wyatt had much the same question.

“To keep you out of their reach,” Lucy said. “Rufus is a biologist. He can look into your—your condition. Maybe he can cure it. And until then I can keep it back. And we’ll look into Rittenhouse, find a way to expose them. Until then, we’re all safe here.”

“Unless they get to Christopher,” Wyatt said.

The other three looked at him. “What’s that mean?” Rufus asked.

Wyatt flushed. “Uh… I probably shouldn’t tell you guys—just, forget I said anything.” He had that awful feeling in his limbs, the way he’d felt when he’d go against his dad even though he knew his dad was a sorry sonofabitch and it was the right thing to do. The instinct to obey his alpha, the pack leader, was just a part of who he was. He was a follower that way, always had been.

“Funny, I didn’t take you for a tease,” Flynn said, and Wyatt flipped him off as he felt his entire body going hot. Fuck that guy, fuck him _so _much.

“Christopher’s a werewolf,” he said.

Rufus narrowed his eyes. “What? But—wait unless Michelle—”

“Who?” Flynn asked.

“Michelle’s her wife, right?” Lucy asked. “Is she a werewolf too?”

Wyatt shook his head. “No. Both their kids are adopted. One’s a werewolf and one isn’t.”

Lucy inhaled sharply as Rufus whistled and Flynn shook his head. “And she’s in Homeland Security?” Flynn said. “Is she trying to get caught?”

Interspecies marriages were… dicey. They weren’t, technically, legal. Plenty of people lived as life partners, out of wedlock, but that upset some religious people and it definitely made legal procedures, including adopting kids, harder. Not to mention that the partnership itself was frowned upon by the authority figures in the various species communities. Witches should stay with witches, humans with humans, werewolves with werewolves, and so on.

Because the world needed more ways to be racist. Yay!

“If Rittenhouse finds out, they can use that against her,” Lucy said. “Just like they got Amy, just like they used Rufus to get to Mason—they threatened to hurt Rufus if Mason didn’t comply.”

“So we just… tread carefully,” Flynn said.

“Strong words coming from the man whose track record is breaking into people’s homes and killing them,” Wyatt pointed out.

“We can go again, you know, if the last couple fights didn’t do it for you,” Flynn said mildly.

“There are ways to go about this without—”

“If you want to rid a body of cancer—”

Lucy put her palms on the table. “Okay. Rufus? Would you mind examining Flynn so we can get started on trying to find a cure? Wyatt?”

“Yeah?”

“Take a shower, you smell like wet dog.”

Flynn smirked. Wyatt barely resisted the urge to flip him off again. “Yeah, will do, Lucy.”

This was gonna be fucking miserable.

* * *

A week into this nonsense, and Rufus was ready to bash Wyatt and Flynn’s heads in.

Vampires and werewolves were basically the opposite of each other. Vampires were solitary creatures, nomads by dint of being immortal and needing to keep a low profile, and fussy to the point of nearly being OCD. Werewolves were social creatures, boisterous, of the ‘live fast and die young’ mentality, and tended to do things like run around the house filling it with candles smelling like pine and leaving clothes everywhere.

Rufus didn’t know if Flynn was going to murder Wyatt first for leaving his shirt on the couch again or if Wyatt was going to murder Flynn for napping on the couch in the daytime when _Wyatt _wanted to nap on it.

“They could just share,” Rufus mumbled to himself as he started making a burger. “But oh no, God forbid we compromise or show any kind of affection for each other.”

He kept grumbling as he got out the lettuce and started to chop a tomato.

“Wyatt, tell me, will you _actually _die if I sit on this side of the couch?”

“That’s _my _side of the couch!” Ah, yes, werewolves were very territorial. “That’s _your _side, stay on _your_ fucking side—”

“Would the two of you knock it off?” Rufus asked, irritated, and the knife slipped, cutting into his finger. “Shit fuck shit!”

Flynn and Wyatt were both up in an instant, Wyatt’s pack instincts kicking in and Flynn smelling blood. Flynn got to Rufus first.

And of course they both started bickering over how to help Rufus bandage his cut.

“I’ll take care of it myself, thanks,” Rufus said, moving away and grabbing the first aid kit.

The bunker phone rang and he grabbed it out of its cradle, holding it between his ear and shoulder as he took care of his cut.

In the background, Wyatt and Flynn were now fighting over—food? How had they even gotten on to that subject?

“I need blood to live, doesn’t mean I don’t eat food to enjoy it, and doesn’t mean I don’t _know _that when you drench something in _barbeque _sauce—” Flynn snapped.

“Rufus?” It was Jiya. “Hey, this is…”

“Jiya, thank God, I’m going to go insane if I have to talk to those two for another minute.”

Jiya laughed. “It’s a relief to hear your voice, I was… I was worried.”

“How’s Connor holding up? Ah!” Rufus gave a small gasp of pain as he tightened the band-aid around his cut.

“…you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just cut my damn finger while I was cutting tomatoes.”

“…for a burger?”

Rufus paused. “Uh, yeah. How’d you know that?”

“I… you really like burgers.” Jiya’s voice was soft. “You always said that someday you’d have to take me to this one place around the corner from your apartment, that they had a burger to die for.”

He had said that, and had meant it, even though he hadn’t been sure if she would want him to.

“I’ll take you,” Rufus told her. “If you want. When I get back.”

“I’d like that.”

It was just as friends, Rufus told himself. It was just as friends.

“We’re all good here,” he added. “I’m running tests on Flynn’s blood. We’re all getting some time outside in the woods, y’know, to stop us going too insane. Lucy’s trying to do some magic-research thing. We’re… we’re making it work.” Or so he hoped.

“It sure sounds like it,” Jiya said, her tone dry.

“Yeah, well, a vampire and a werewolf in close quarters, what do you expect? Christopher had to know this would be like setting off a grenade.”

“Maybe you could get them to… I don’t know… learn more about each other? There are a lot of misconceptions, maybe if they learned the truth about how the other one operates they could be more courteous, more understanding.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

Silence fell, one that felt… comfortable, but also weighted, like they were both waiting for the other one to say something.

“I’ll, um, I’ll let Agent Christopher know you’re all okay then,” Jiya said.

“Yeah, yeah, you, um, say hi to Connor from me, if you can. And—my mom and Kevin, they’re…?”

“They’re okay, Christopher put a team to watch them.”

“Okay. You look after yourself, too. Be careful.”

“I will be. Don’t get yourself in the middle of a vampire-werewolf showdown.”

Rufus smiled as he hung up the phone.

Until he tuned back into Flynn and Wyatt arguing, that is.

“Okay, you know what?” He turned to them. “We’re going to sit down, and we’re going to talk.”

Wyatt and Flynn blinked at him. “What?” they said in unison, and then glared at each other.

Lucy emerged from down the hall, hefting some books. Rufus pointed at her. “You, join me. We’re going to share the most ludicrous random facts about werewolves and vampires together.”

“…we are?” Lucy asked. She set down her books.

“This is bullshit,” Wyatt mumbled.

“Look,” Rufus said, “we all have to get along with each other one way or another, so, this is as good of a way to break the ice as any, right?”

Wyatt glared at Flynn. Flynn glared at Wyatt. Lucy glared at both of them.

“Fine,” Wyatt snarled at last, more than a little bit of a wolf growl working its way into his voice. “The most random fact I can think of: the bishop of Orlando is the bishop in charge of baptizing all werewolves and we fall under his jurisdiction if we’re Catholic, no matter where we might actually be living.”

Lucy, Rufus, and Flynn all stared at him. “He’s… what?” Rufus asked.

Wyatt shrugged.

Lucy tapped something out on her phone. “Wow, he’s right. The rule is that ‘any newly discovered territory shall fall under the bishopric from whence the discovering expedition departed’ and the moon landings launched from Orlando.”

“So does the bishop… know werewolves are real?” Flynn asked.

“Yeah, he’s briefed on it once he gets the position.”

“Great. Now you know that about werewolves.” Rufus looked at Flynn. “Flynn?”

“Uh…” Flynn shrugged. “Technically vampires can’t eat garlic but that doesn’t stop any of us. I don’t know a single vampire that won’t put up with the awful stomach pains afterwards if the Italian food is good enough. Always worth it.”

“What, like being lactose intolerant?” Wyatt asked.

“Basically.”

“What about crosses?”

“That burns if you touch it but being close to one just makes your skin itch so… I suppose if there was some artwork in the Vatican you really, really wanted to see, you could make it work.”

Wyatt shook his head. “That’s like—if you’re a werewolf and you know the full moon is the same night as the premiere of a movie you can’t wait to see so you fucking go anyway even though you know you shouldn’t and you end up fucking transforming in the alley behind the theater and your pack teases you for weeks about it.”

“Speaking from personal experience?” Lucy asked, smiling in amusement.

“It was a Bond film, what was I supposed to do, wait!?”

“A Bond film?” Flynn shook his head. “And here I thought you had taste.”

Wyatt launched into an impassioned rant at Flynn, Lucy asked a question about the whole ‘box of dirt’ thing for vampires, and Rufus thought… okay, maybe this was going to turn out okay.

Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr posts I shamelessly stole stuff from this time:
> 
> https://wingedkiare.tumblr.com/post/187321718278/okfinepanic-tyrannosaurus-trainwreck  
https://extasiswings.tumblr.com/post/178557434051/zeldafan42-monstersandmaw-harpsicalbiobug  
https://extasiswings.tumblr.com/post/179791028171/witterprompts-what-youre-doing-right-now-is  
https://rhinozilla.tumblr.com/post/179332785443/edithmcbride-lovingmisswatson-zaoling  
https://wingedkiare.tumblr.com/post/186388962134/victorian-sexstache-tedkordisanasshole


	5. Chapter 5

Lucy woke up to a dog whining at her bedroom door.

_Whine. Whine. Scratch scratch scratch. Whine. Whine. Scratch scratch scratch._

Lucy cracked her eyes open and glared at her closed door. “Wyatt, shift back and go to sleep.”

On the other side of the door, Wyatt just whined and scratched some more.

Lucy groaned and looked at her bedside clock. It was one in the morning. What the actual hell?

She got up, grabbing her bathrobe, and opened the door to find a very big, very fluffy, and very sad looking wolf on the other side.

“What do you want?” she asked, testy at being woken up in the middle of the night. “Transform back!”

Wyatt whined pathetically.

The door down the hall opened and Flynn stuck his head out. “I know I’m nocturnal but really!? Do you know what time it is?”

Wyatt growled, then whimpered, rolling over and looking extremely sad and adorable, with his big puppy eyes.

Flynn softened, but only slightly. Lucy tried not to look at the way Flynn was now, oddly sleep-rumpled in a soft gray shirt and flannel pajama pants, his hair mussed. He looked rather the opposite of a put-together vampire. In fact he looked almost human.

“We’re not going on a walk,” Flynn said. “We can do that in the morning.”

Another door opened, and Rufus stepped out, rubbing at his eyes. “What the hell—oh no.”

Wyatt panted at Rufus as if to say _here he is! The solution to my problems!_

Rufus did not look pleased. “I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that someone’s moon cycle is off.”

“What?” Lucy scrunched up her nose. Why did that sound like a fancy term for period?

Rufus gestured at Wyatt. “The whole… uh, full moon thing is a little more complicated than you’d think. Werewolves can transform pretty much any time they want, but they naturally transform the night of the full moon, it’s beyond their control. But, uh, some wolves transform on the night of the full moon only, others it lasts three days, others skip three months and are fine and then suddenly they’re transforming on, like, a waxing crescent moon…”

“So what you’re saying is that being a werewolf is like having a period,” Lucy said.

Wyatt sat back on his hind legs, looking horribly offended, then blinked and tilted his head as if to say, _wait you may be right_, then made a scrunched-up face like he was thinking _ew_, then ducked his head in a weary _aw crap you’re right_ expression.

Flynn snorted, and when Lucy glanced at him she saw him watching Wyatt with thinly-disguised amusement. Flynn looked so different when he was relaxed like this. It made her chest warm, and if she relaxed enough, she could almost feel that… that weird thrumming in her veins that she’d gotten when he’d fed on her, almost like music but in her bloodstream.

“How long is this going to last?” Flynn asked, looking straight at Wyatt.

Wyatt gave an approximation of a shrug, then gave another pathetic whine, then pressed himself against Lucy’s legs and gave her a very sad face.

Lucy reached down and scratched behind his ears. Wyatt’s tail thumped on the floor.

“Well, I’ve already got one vampire virus to worry about,” Rufus said. “I’m not worrying about a werewolf transformation, too. This’ll just have to run its course.”

Flynn shrugged. “Fine by me. I like him better when he can’t talk.”

Wyatt growled. Flynn just smirked. It wasn’t the kind of bitter smirk he’d been giving them all before, it was more amused and lighthearted than that, and it made her stomach flip. It occurred to her, belatedly, that Flynn was a rather handsome man, now that the sharp edges of him had been held back, the claws retracted, allowing her to actually stop and take him in without fear of getting cut.

“I’m going back to bed, then,” she announced, and suited the action to the word, only to have Wyatt try and follow her into the bedroom.

Lucy paused.

Wyatt whined again and nudged at her with his nose.

Lucy tried to remember what she could about werewolves in wolf form. They weren’t idiots, all instinct and no human faculties, but they did struggle to reign in those instincts more. The wolf parts of them were louder, and on the full moon it was especially so. Wyatt didn’t seem to want to rip a poor deer to shreds or howl at the moon. Could it be that, like a dog, he needed cuddles?

The idea was hilarious, and Lucy had to bite her lip to try and hide her smile. Wyatt in human form, she was sure, would’ve snapped at any of them for suggesting he needed that kind of thing, at least from the three of them. They weren’t… they didn’t all have that kind of friendship, not yet, anyway.

“All right,” she said. “You can come in, but if you transform back I’m kicking you out.”

Wyatt looked alarmed, though that look faded when Lucy climbed into bed and patted the foot of it. He bounded up onto the bed and did a happy, bouncy circle three times around the foot of it before settling down, resting his head on her calf and thumping his tail.

Lucy was wary of him trying anything in the night, but Wyatt stayed in pretty much the same place the entire time—the only change was that when she woke up, he had scooted a little farther up the bed so that her hand was now buried in his fur.

* * *

Wyatt stayed a wolf for a week.

He hated to admit it, and would never have said it out loud to the others, but it was his damn lack of an anchor. He tried to transform, really he did, but he just couldn’t fucking manage it.

His cycle had always been a little wonky. Jess would skip a month, always, transforming every two months. His dad was always a day late and would transform the night after the full moon. Bam Bam was just the one night, on the full moon, like clockwork, and yet somehow the idiot would always forget about it, wondering why he was extra growly and wanting to go on walks for the few days leading up to it, until halfway through the day of he’d get this kind of wide-eyed _oh shit_ look on his face and everyone else in the unit would roll their eyes because _seriously, man? You always do this, it’s always the same._

Wyatt, though, yeah, he’d sometimes be a day early or a day late, and he’d stay transformed for two, three days. A bit weird. Nothing to worry about, though.

But a week?

Yeah, shit, this was concerning.

Denise had his file, and when Rufus told Jiya over the phone about Wyatt’s, ah, problem, Jiya told Denise and Denise wanted to send in a doctor and put Wyatt on the pill. Which, fuck that, the pill made him bloated and cranky all the fucking time, he was not going on the fucking pill, and none of that was going to help all that much anyway when it was his anchor that was the real problem.

“Why can’t he just stay like this?” Flynn asked on day four. “He’s much better this way.”

Wyatt gave him a look that plainly said _I will eat you alive._

Flynn just chuckled and scratched behind his ears. “Who’s a good boy?”

_Me! _Everything in Wyatt perked up and he thumped his tail. _I’m the good boy! Me! Me! Me!_

…he then realized what he was doing and glared again. Motherfucking _instincts_.

It was also nice, though? In a weird way. As a wolf, he could get as many cuddles as he wanted to. Cuddling with other werewolves while they were all in human form, that was fine, whatever. Everyone knew how it worked. But touching other people who weren’t werewolves, it had… connotations. And Wyatt didn’t know how to ask for it, or if he should even be allowed to ask for it.

But as a wolf? Hell yeah. Cuddle time.

Lucy let him sleep in her bed every night, and he laid on her feet and felt so content, like he was sleeping properly for the first time in ages. Rufus would play fetch with him. Lucy would pet him all the time and it wasn’t _weird_.

Flynn would pet him sometimes too, and Wyatt would feel like he was melting, but Flynn didn’t do it often and Wyatt didn’t want to let him because, well, Flynn was a cranky sarcastic asshole and a vampire and Wyatt didn’t even prefer men in general touching him like that _so._

But it was like he didn’t have to really worry about… expectations or who he should be. He could just be himself, whoever the fuck that was. When he was a wolf, everything felt that much simpler.

The one annoying thing about being a wolf was that he couldn’t talk.

When Lucy cried about Amy, he could only put his head on her lap and pray she felt him thinking _it’s okay, I’m here, you haven’t lost me yet for what it’s worth, we’ll get her back. _When Rufus stomped around in frustration and threw a notebook of equations across the room because he was getting nowhere with the work on an antidote or whatever for Flynn, Wyatt could only gently pick the notebook up in his mouth and trot it back to Rufus, and hope that Rufus could hear, _you’ll figure it out eventually, buddy, you’re the smartest guy I know._

He was grateful as fuck that Flynn gave him room on the couch and couldn’t hear Wyatt’s conflicted thoughts of _go away _and _no please stay get closer so close I can smell the heart of you._

None of it would matter in the end, though, if he couldn’t shift back. If he couldn’t regain his human form. If he stayed a wolf too long he’d lose touch with that side. He’d think only like a wolf, only in animal terms, his higher intelligence and personality lost.

It terrified him that he wasn’t sure if he wanted that or not.

* * *

Lucy awoke with a start, remembering only faint screams, or more like the echo of screams, and her sister’s familiar hands wrapped around her wrists.

Her breath came in heavy, and for the first time, she wished she had time magic for the present and the future. She wished she could see Amy, wherever she was, make sure she was okay—make sure that she would end up okay. Seeing people’s pasts was bad enough, why would she want to see possible futures that might not even happen? Why would she ever want to spend her time freaking out about that?

Well, now she did. She wanted to have even a hope of helping Amy, somehow. Instead of being cooped up in this place, this place where not even her mother knew where she was. Just doing research—and research was all she had wanted to do, all that she felt, really, she was comfortable with, but not now, not with her sister trapped somewhere and maybe not even alive (but God no, she’d know, wouldn’t she, she’d know if Amy was dead, she’d feel it in her soul somehow)…

Lucy got up.

Wyatt was passed out on the foot of the bed, but he didn’t stir as she slipped past him. They hadn’t figured out how to get him back into human form yet, which was… worrying. As much as Lucy liked Wyatt this way—he was so much freer with himself, like the posturing, annoying shield he always kept up was now finally down—she was scared that he would lose the human side of himself. That in the end all they would be left with was the animal.

She tiptoed out, grabbing her robe, and made her way into the kitchen. She hated being stuck in this bunker, even if they could go out into the woods for a bit every day to stave off pure insanity. She always felt like she was in an oversized coffin.

To her surprise, the light was on. And did she smell…?

Lucy walked in to find Flynn standing by the oven, checking on what appeared to be muffins.

He snapped the oven door shut as she entered. “Lucy.”

“Flynn.”

They stared at each other awkwardly. Lucy could feel the phantom bite of his fangs in her neck and found herself looking away first. “I didn’t think anyone else was up.”

“I am nocturnal,” Flynn pointed out.

She sat down on the kitchen table. “What is that?”

“Lemon poppyseed muffins. They’re… Rufus likes them.”

“Oh.”

Flynn moved around the kitchen with a practiced air, and she had an image of him doing this in a happier time, making food for his family, and her heart caught like a skirt snagging against a nail. “I didn’t know you baked.”

“Well, once upon a time, I had to eat actual food to survive.” His tone was biting.

Lucy opened her mouth, closed it, and then settled for a feeble, “I’m sorry.”

Flynn snorted. “Sorry. You’re _sorry_.” He shook his head, then turned to face her. “My mother married a vampire, you know. I know they’re not monsters.”

“They?”

Flynn seemed to realize his error. His gaze grew dark and shuttered. “Why are you awake? It’s not the witching hour.”

Lucy bristled. “None of your business.”

“Well, I figured, since we’re apparently learning about each other…”

Lucy found irritation welling up in her throat. “You know, you act like you know me. You have from the first. Saying you could—you could smell who I was in my blood. You don’t know me, you don’t know me at all.”

“I don’t?” Flynn arched an eyebrow, folding his arms. Closing himself off. “Lucy Preston, professor of American History at Stanford, applied for tenure a month ago, they say you weren’t rejected because of being a witch but you also seem to have submitted quite a lot of petitions to get magical history taught at your school that’s also been rejected. Your mother’s a legend in her field, which is the same field as yours. You think you’re supposed to be like her and follow in her footsteps but you’re not sure that’s what you really want. Your father is dead—lung cancer from smoking—and sometimes your mother coughs and you worry she’s headed down the same route. You love your sister more than anyone in the world.”

Lucy stood up, all of her on fire, shaking, a tsunami in her heart. “How—”

“I looked you up after we first ran into each other. Learned a lot that way.” Flynn shrugged. “Then I fed on you and learned the rest.”

“You still don’t know me.”

“If you’re unhappy about it, maybe you shouldn’t have had me feed on you.”

“So you would have preferred I let you die?”

“You only let me live so you could turn me in, so Rittenhouse—”

“I didn’t know about Rittenhouse—”

“You think that—”

“_You _think—”

Their words stumbled over each other, crisscrossing, and Lucy couldn’t even hear herself think. She stepped back, wondering when they had gotten so close, neither of them yelling for the sake of their roommates but their hissing filling the air like rattlesnakes.

Flynn looked away, his gaze heavy, the first one to break contact this time. “I’m sorry. I… you’re right, I don’t know you. You—you saw me more… exposed, and weak, than I think anyone has. You and the other two, and you were strangers to me. It… it’s been a struggle to get used to that idea.”

“I’m awake because I dreamed of Amy,” Lucy blurted out. “I dreamed—I don’t remember but I was losing her. And I’m terrified that’s the truth. I’ve never lost anyone like that before, and I… not her. It’s my fault.”

“I thought it was my fault, what happened to my family.” Flynn’s tone was deceptively mild. “I looked into Rittenhouse. But what happened to them—whatever Rittenhouse might do to your sister, it’s on them. It’s not on you.”

“What about what you’ve done?” Lucy whispered. “What you want to do? To avenge them?”

Flynn looked her in the eye again. His eyes were black, with just a hint of red rimming the edge, bleeding in. “That is entirely on me. Make no mistake, I’m not excusing my actions. If I… if I could see my family again, I’d…” Lucy realized with a horrible, cold sinking feeling that more and more red was bleeding into Flynn’s eyes. “I’d hug my little girl. I’d kiss my wife. And then I’d walk away. Because after all I’ve done, I couldn’t—how could I be a husband, a father, again, after what I’ve done?”

His eyes were completely red now, and Lucy saw a hint of his fangs when he spoke. “Vampires aren’t monsters. But I am.”

She lunged forward, grabbing onto his arms, and reached into him, into his past.

_A woman with warm hazel eyes is crying. Flynn is a child, he’s a child and he’s asking her how he can help, why is she crying—it’s Gabriel’s birthday and Mama always cries—_

Lucy gasped like coming up from the freezing ocean, breaking the water’s surface.

Flynn sank to his knees, his eyes their usual blue-green-gray color, _an ocean_, she thought. _How fitting._

“I’m sorry.” Maybe it was fair, that he drank from her and saw all that he did, when she was plunging into his past with her magic and seeing all that of him.

Flynn swallowed. His jaw worked. “You’re doing what you have to,” he said at last. His voice was rougher than sandpaper.

Lucy had the urge to reach out and cradle his jaw in the palm of her hand, to run her fingers through his hair, to pull his face into her chest. How much comfort had he gotten the last two years, if any?

_Who is Gabriel? _She wanted to ask. Was that the first husband, the vampire that Flynn’s mother had lost? Or someone else?

Flynn stood up, gently detaching her hands from him. Lucy thought he might leave and found herself, pathetically, about to beg him to stay, even if she herself wasn’t sure why—just that she knew she couldn’t be alone at that moment, couldn’t let the coffin swallow her—except Flynn then simply turned and took the muffins out of the oven as the timer went off.

Oh.

Lucy sat back on top of the table.

Flynn passed her a muffin. “Careful, it’s hot.”

She waved her hand, muttering a spell to cool it just slightly. She found Flynn watching her as she did it, his eyes on her hands, and she felt her face heat up.

They didn’t say anything more, and about twenty minutes later Wyatt padded into the kitchen either wondering where his cuddly bed companion had gotten to or following the smell of food or both.

* * *

The more time Flynn spent around these people, the more time he got, despite himself, attached.

It helped that Wyatt wasn’t being, well, Wyatt. Flynn had seen a lot when he’d bitten Wyatt. He’d seen a father who terrified and used a belt and liked whiskey. He’d seen a beautiful blonde woman who shifted fast as the wind into a great white wolf, ferocious no matter what her form. He’d seen war after war, and fear of the self, and the shame of feeling like never being enough.

Flynn wasn’t made of stone. He could empathize. But he also wasn’t going to put up with the posturing bullshit Wyatt was throwing at him. It was like Wyatt was trying to enforce whatever alpha male stereotypes Flynn had heard about werewolves growing up.

As a wolf, though? Wyatt was… okay he was adorable. He vibrated with happiness when he got petted, he had this cute little yawn he would do, and he was shockingly good at successfully begging Flynn for scraps of food.

If it wasn’t for the whole ‘unable to change back and in danger of losing his humanity’ thing, Flynn would’ve been happy to let Wyatt stay a wolf forever.

As for Lucy…

…Flynn wasn’t thinking about that. About her. About… them.

Rufus was proving to be a stronger ally, perhaps even a—a friend, though, more than Flynn had expected. Maybe it was just the fact that Rufus was spending nearly all his time trying to find a cure for Flynn’s condition, but Flynn was feeling rather warm and fuzzy towards the guy.

He sat at the kitchen table and let Rufus draw more blood from him, patient as Rufus checked his charts and equipment.

“You know, I have to say, I think I underestimated you when I was researching you.”

“You looked us up?” Rufus made a note. “Why am I not surprised? You know you have a creepy uncle vibe going, right? Is that a vampire thing or were you always like that?”

Flynn rolled his eyes. “Were you always this snarky or did you have to train at it?”

“Takes one to know one.” A ghost of a grin flitted across Rufus’s face.

“Just because your girlfriend appreciates your ridiculous sense of humor doesn’t mean we all do.”

“Liar, you love m—girlfriend?” Rufus seemed to catch up on that part of the sentence and took the needle out of Flynn’s arm more roughly than planned. Flynn winced at the sting.

“Yes. Jiya.”

“Jiya, she’s not, we, she’s not my girlfriend.”

Flynn looked around, as if in confusion. “I’m so sorry, I must’ve misunderstood, was that Wyatt you were grinning at dopily on the phone yesterday?”

“Fuck you,” Rufus said without heat, bandaging Flynn’s arm because, oh yes, the virus wasn’t letting his body do its natural vampire healing thing at a regular pace, slowing it down and making it weaker. “She… I’d say yes, if she wanted me, fuck, in a heartbeat. But we… it’s kind of awkward. I don’t want to ruin anything.”

Flynn cleared his throat. “Look. I’m not. The best at romance, and all of that. It took me months to ask Lorena out, and when I finally did, I learned that I could’ve asked her out in a couple weeks of knowing her, if I hadn’t been a chickenshit. I’ve seen your face when you talk to her. Don’t… don’t waste your time. If I could’ve had a few more months, a few more days, a few more… seconds, I’d take them.”

With Iris, too. With his daughter. _Ten more minutes, Daddy? Can I go to bed in ten minutes?_

He’d give her ten minutes. He’d give ten seconds, _one _more second, just to hold her.

Rufus looked at him, and even though Flynn hadn’t said anything more, he felt like Rufus could somehow hear it all anyway. “I’ll think about it,” Rufus said, and he sounded like he seriously would.

That was when the phone rang.

* * *

“Talk about fate,” Rufus heard Flynn say with a smirk in his voice as Rufus got up to answer the phone.

Rufus flipped him off. Flynn was… nothing like Rufus had expected when first dealing with him, but Rufus was finding he liked the guy, grumpiness and all. Not that he would ever tell Flynn that, the guy’s head would swell up and Rufus would never hear the end of it.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Rufus?” It was Jiya, and she sounded terrified. “I—I need to talk to Lucy, I—I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“You okay? What’s going on, what’s wrong, talk to me.”

There was a wet sort of sound, and Rufus realized with an awful swoop in his stomach that Jiya was crying.

“I keep having this dream, this girl, she’s got—she’s got sort of dark blonde hair and she’s my age, and she’s trapped—and I need to talk to Lucy, please.”

“Jiya—”

“Did you—Rufus did you cut yourself? On—on the hand? While cutting tomatoes?”

Rufus froze. Slowly, as if checking to make sure it had actually happened, he raised his hand up to look at the band-aid he still had wrapped around his finger. “How’d you know that?”

“I saw it. I dreamt it. I don’t know. Please, please can I talk to Lucy?”

“It’s going to be okay,” he said automatically. At Flynn he mouthed, _get Lucy_. “Take deep breaths, Jiya, it’s okay.” His chest ached and he would have given anything in that moment to be able to touch her, to hold her. He had never heard her sound scared like this before. Jiya was fierce, far braver than Rufus, if you asked him. He hadn’t thought she was even capable of feeling afraid.

Flynn exited the room at vampiric speed, returning seconds later with Lucy in tow. Lucy stumbled as they came to a stop, dizzy at moving so quickly. “Here.” Flynn practically thrust her at the telephone.

Lucy gave him a dirty look. Flynn shrugged as if to say _what do you want from me? _Lucy opened her mouth, presumably to tell him what, exactly, she wanted from him and it was probably going to be something Flynn found unpleasant, but then Rufus thrust the phone at her.

“It’s Jiya, she’s calling, she needs to talk to you.”

Lucy took the phone, cradling it against her cheek. “Jiya? This is Lucy.”

Wyatt hurried in, whining and looking distressed, clearly smelling everyone’s stress in the air. Flynn absentmindedly reached out a hand and Wyatt pressed his head up into it, letting Flynn scratch behind his ears. Wyatt was larger than the average, non-supernatural wolf, and came up to Flynn’s waist.

Rufus stood next to Lucy, leaning in, trying to catch what Jiya was saying.

“Can you talk to her?” Lucy said, her breath catching, her eyes bright. “Can you—Jiya can you talk to her, can you say anything, in these visions?”

“No. No, I just—I know she’s scared, and she’s hurt. She keeps repeating something, like a message, like she thinks… someone can hear her.”

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m a time witch. I can only see the past but—I mean, theoretically, time is the present and the future as well, so, she might think that I could hear her somehow.”

“I didn’t think she was—not until I realized she was saying your name.”

“What does she say?” Lucy’s voice was a whisper.

Wyatt left Flynn and padded over to press himself against Lucy’s legs. Lucy dove her hand into his thick fur, clinging as if for dear life. Rufus seriously suspected that Lucy would fall over if Wyatt wasn’t propping her up.

“She says… Lucy, and then Stanford 1980, over and over. Lucy, Stanford 1980.”

“That’s when my mom was at Stanford.” Lucy’s brow puckered. “It was her junior year. Why would Amy be talking to me about that?”

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s important enough she’s trying to get the message across time.”

“Do you—” Rufus could see Lucy swallow. “Do you think this is the present? Or the past, the near past? Or the future?”

“I… I don’t know.” Jiya sounded scared, still.

Lucy took a few deep breaths. “Okay. My—my magic usually only works if I touch something related to the person, or the person themselves, but yours… seems to work across distances. Um. I don’t… I’ll do what research I can, the best person to ask would be my mom but if Amy’s… I wouldn’t tell her, about you.”

“You don’t trust your mother?” Rufus asked.

“Call it instinct,” Lucy snapped.

Something in Flynn’s face shifted and he made a move as if to reach out for Lucy, then subsided.

Rufus wasn’t touching _that _mess with a ten foot pole, but he did want to throw Flynn’s words about wasting time back at him.

“Okay, can you tell Denise, at least?” Rufus suggested.

Wyatt nodded in agreement, wuffling.

“I… I can try. I’d ask Mason, he could run some tests, but…”

“If you think he can be trusted,” Lucy began.

“Tell him it’s for me,” Rufus said, speaking before he even realized he planned to. “He owes me for getting me into this mess. Have him test you, see what he can analyze. Tell no one, Jiya, okay?” He took the phone from Lucy. “Don’t trust anyone, I need—I want you to be safe.”

“You know it’s really not your right to tell me what to do, or to dictate if I’m safe or not,” Jiya pointed out, but he could hear from her tone that she was smiling. “It’s sweet, though, so I’ll let it slide. Just this once.”

Even through is knot of worry, Rufus found himself smiling back. “Generous of you.”

“I’m the generous one in this relationship, remember? I always share my fries with you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you do.” He spoke more quietly, more intimately, than he planned.

Flynn and Lucy, even Wyatt, were looking at him with soft expressions on their faces. Rufus glared and then turned away from them.

“See what you can find on your end, and we’ll see what we can find on ours,” Rufus whispered. “Stay in touch, we’ll do the same. I… I’ll talk to you soon.”

“We’ll talk soon,” Jiya responded. A promise.

Rufus ended the call and looked at Lucy, who was pale and still using Wyatt to keep herself upright.

“She saw her,” Lucy said, confirming what Rufus had heard, what Flynn and Wyatt with their supernatural hearing had probably already picked up on, but just hearing it said directly to them… made it more real, somehow. “Jiya saw Amy. She’s alive, and she’s trying to get a message to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I have shamelessly taken ideas from:
> 
> https://extasiswings.tumblr.com/post/179686480441/hugealienpie-papermonkeyism-hushpiper  
http://www.koryoswrites.com/nonfiction/dominance-behavior-in-canids/
> 
> Wolves are one of my favorite animals and I've been reading up on them/studying them for fifteen years now, so it was great to find this second post which does a great job of shortly and neatly explaining how dominance and submission in wolf packs actually works.


	6. Chapter 6

Lucy yawned as she headed for the shower. Wyatt submitted to being bathed with a kind of grumpy dignity, as if he was silently informing them all that he wasn’t liking this but he’d put up with it for their sake, but Rufus would hog all the hot water if she didn’t make sure to get in before him.

Flynn, apparently, had the same thought, because she walked right into him as he rounded the corner at a clipped pace and they froze outside the shower room door.

Flynn’s hand shot out automatically to stop her from falling, his hand large and fingers firm around her shoulder. “Sorry, I—”

“No, no, it was me, I’m—”

“Do you want to go—” Flynn released her and gestured at the door.

“No, no, you can go first, you’re faster…”

She gave him a smile, feeling painfully awkward, and then slipped into the bathroom.

Stanford, 1980. What was it about that year that Amy needed her to know?

Amy had been saying the words out loud. It was possible that was why she was saying that—she could be watched, wherever she was. So she couldn’t just outright say what she needed Lucy to know. Lucy scrubbed her hair, thinking. Could it be something to do with Mom? Mom had been really active in the witches’ rights movements, and the 1980s had been only a few decades after the existence of the supernatural became common knowledge. Could something regarding Rittenhouse have happened with Mom?

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

When she got out of the shower, she danced around Flynn, who was waiting patiently in the hallway.

Lucy tried not to be aware of how very warm and flushed she was from the shower and failed. “It’s all yours,” she said.

Flynn nodded, looking right into her eyes, and she wasn’t sure if that was just because that was how he was, always looking her in the eyes, or because he was trying to avoid looking anywhere else. Not that he thought of her that way. He was a grieving widower, for crying out loud, but she was human and he was a vampire. Was it rude of her to be like this, sort of like dangling a delicious sandwich in front of a starving man? She didn’t know.

Lucy hurried on before she could overthink it, realizing she’d been staring awkwardly at Flynn for about thirty seconds too long. Right. Mom. Stanford. 1980.

The internet didn’t yield much at first, but then she grabbed Rufus and the two of them started to dig into the Stanford online archives by hacking into the Stanford library (normally you needed a student or professor ID to get in, but Rufus had pointed out that Rittenhouse could put a tracker on Lucy’s login information and could then be alerted and figure out where she was logging in from using GPS).

Nothing, nothing, nothing… Lucy’s eyes glazed over slightly as they scrolled. Nothing, nothing, still nothing…

Wait.

She pointed at the computer screen. “Stop, there.”

Rufus stopped scrolling. “Which one?”

It was a photo. _Students leaving a club meeting_ was the caption. Apparently the photo was from the 1980 yearbook. It showed about ten people leaving a building and walking out into the bright sun, smiling, looking relaxed. She was much younger, fewer lines on her face, the only woman wearing a skirt.

_Mom._

Odd, though. Her mother was sporting… a baby bump. Or maybe it was a trick of the light. But Carol hadn’t met Henry Wallace yet. Not if the date on this photo was correct. Carol had always said that Lucy had been born a couple months premature, but—that couldn’t be true, not according to this picture.

Carol Preston was standing next to a young man, the others behind her. Lucy read the caption again. _From left to right: Derek Keynes, Joanna Whitmore, Carolyn Preston_…

Lucy’s heart stumbled.

_Benjamin Cahill._

She shoved back from the desk. “What…”

Rufus squinted at the caption. “I know some of these names. Francis Wilson? That was one of the guys Flynn killed.”

“Who did I kill this time?” Flynn asked, entering.

Rufus pointed at the screen.

The walls felt too small and Lucy struggled to breathe. Wyatt, who had been napping on the couch, jumped up and padded over to her, whining.

“All of these names are Rittenhouse,” Flynn said, reading the caption. “Whitmore’s the only one I don’t recognize. Carolyn Preston… that’s…” He looked over at Lucy.

She hated how small it was, she hated that there was no air. “That’s what—that’s what Amy—that’s what she—” Her breathing was too shallow, too fast, but she couldn’t control it. “She must’ve found—Rittenhouse, Mom was Rittenhouse—she—she’s pregnant with me, she’s too early, that’s too early, she shouldn’t—why is she pregnant—”

“I smelled Cahill’s blood in you,” Flynn said, and then looked immediately like he had swallowed a cactus.

Rufus and Wyatt both stared at him as if to say _real tactful there, genius_.

“That’s what Amy wanted us to figure out?” Rufus asked. “That you’re Rittenhouse? That your mom used to be Rittenhouse? Could—could your mom be the one who captured Amy?”

“No, no, Mom—she would never—” It was all spinning—

Wyatt whined, tugging her until she sat down, and put his head in her lap. Lucy pet his fur. Had her mother, had her own mother kidnapped her sister?

And Flynn—she looked up, her body shaking, cold, as she realized what that meant. She was his enemy, her family, she was related to the people who had killed his family in front of him and turned him into this… into what he was now.

“I have to go,” Lucy blurted out. She shoved Wyatt off her lap—Wyatt yelped—and fled into her room.

* * *

Wyatt didn’t really get much sleep that night.

Lucy was up, just curled on the bed, staring into nothing, and he couldn’t leave her in that state. He pressed himself against her, snuffling, letting her press her face into his thick fur and pretending he didn’t feel that fur getting wet.

_It doesn’t change how we think of you, _he wanted to say. He was so angry he couldn’t change, so angry that he couldn’t say anything to help her. For once it felt like he actually had the right words, knew what he wanted to say, and he couldn’t.

He tried shifting, over and over, but he couldn’t seem to reach that part of himself that was human, that part that was rooted in his other side. He felt like he was stretching for it, wound so tight like a spring, ready to snap or recoil violently, and he didn’t know what would happen to him when he did.

Wolves had a fuckton of fur, layers and layers of it, and people always were shocked when they first pet him to see how the fur just kind of… kept going. But Lucy seemed grateful for it, twining it around her fingers, combing through it, rubbing her cheek against the top of Wyatt’s head. _You’re still you, _he wanted to say, but he couldn’t, so he just licked her cheek instead. _You’re still you._

She fell asleep eventually, right on top of him, but fuck if he was going to sleep. What if she had a nightmare?

At sometime in the night, the door opened softly, and Flynn stuck his head in. Wyatt smelled him before he opened the door, and just raised his head, trying not to think about why he didn’t feel… why he just felt safe, with Flynn there. Like Flynn was someone he’d known for ages.

Flynn could obviously see them in the dark. Fuckin’ vampires. “How is she?” he whispered, his voice soft enough that Lucy couldn’t hear it, but Wyatt with his superhearing could.

Wyatt whined softly.

Flynn looked like he might walk over—he even opened the door a little more—but stopped. “I… I’ll check in with you in the morning.”

_Where are you going? _Wyatt wanted to ask. He hated so damn much that he couldn’t speak.

Before he could second guess his instinct, he slithered out from underneath Lucy, using his mouth to gently tug her blanket over her and pushing her with his nose until she was properly curled up, her head on her pillow. He nuzzled her face for good measure, too. Maybe that way she could still smell him in her sleep and feel guarded.

Then he trotted off the bed and over to Flynn, looking up at him.

Flynn raised an eyebrow. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Wyatt nudged him. _I know you’re not going to sleep, dickwad._

Flynn let Wyatt slip through the door and closed it behind them. “I’m going for a night run,” he said. “I can’t sleep.”

Wyatt followed Flynn up through the bunker until they slipped out the reinforced front door, out into the night of the cool, dark woods. Wyatt panted, waiting for Flynn.

Flynn looked around, then took a deep breath of the night air. Vampires didn’t need to breathe, but Wyatt imagined that Flynn just wanted to do it for the sake of it, to take in the smell and taste of the air.

When he looked at Wyatt, his eyes were black. Not the red of a raging vampire, but the way a vampire’s eyes should look. Wyatt was surprised to find himself reassured by that. He bared his teeth at Wyatt in a facsimile of a smile. “Let’s run.”

Flynn took off, Wyatt bounding after him.

He hadn’t run like this, just for the freedom of it, in years. Not since he and Jess had last chased each other through the trees, back when they’d been happy. Back when they hadn’t been fighting.

They raced through the darkness, chasing something, chasing nothing, chasing each other, just running because they could, until Wyatt’s lungs and legs burned and he had to skid to a stop and howl, even though it made Flynn laugh at him, because he finally felt fucking _alive_.

Yeah, he didn’t really sleep that night.

But he didn’t mind at all.

He didn’t want to disturb Lucy, so he followed Flynn when they got back as Flynn went into the kitchen. Wyatt settled on the couch, prepared to just watch Flynn bake—but Flynn just made himself a coffee and settled on the couch as well.

Wyatt sniffed the coffee.

“There’s no blood in it,” Flynn said dryly. “I know I don’t have to have it but I still like the taste.” He paused. “I know it’s all in my head but I like to… eat normal food, now and again. To remind myself.”

He settled back against the cushions, sipping at his coffee. Wyatt really wasn’t sure what to do now. Should he go back to his own room? Should he stay here? Did Flynn expect Wyatt to do something else, something Wyatt had somehow failed to pick up on?

Flynn glanced at him. “I won’t kill you if you want to stretch out, you know. I know that… you need touch. Werewolves need a lot of touch, don’t they?”

Wyatt nodded, and gingerly stretched out, careful not to encroach too much on Flynn.

Flynn rolled his eyes, and hauled Wyatt—oh fuck he was strong, Wyatt had forgotten—so that Wyatt was now draped over Flynn’s legs as he shifted so that he was also longways along the couch, Wyatt’s muzzle on Flynn’s thigh.

“There.” Flynn picked up his coffee and sipped it. _You should make some for Lucy, _Wyatt thought but couldn’t say.

He hated that he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t…

He yawned.

Flynn gave a dry chuckle, softly petting Wyatt’s ear. “Go to sleep, puppy.”

_I’m not a fucking puppy, you mosquito. _He was so tired and relaxed, finally relaxing…

It was the last thought Wyatt had before he found himself waking up again.

Ugh. His nose itched.

His nose itched, so he scratched it. Ugh, he could taste his own morning breath, he needed… well first he needed food.

He sat up and yawned, running a hand through his hair. Flynn was passed out, empty coffee cup on the floor, not even breathing. He looked like a damn corpse, not moving at all. A very handsome corpse. It was kind of eerie.

“Fuckin’ vampires,” Wyatt muttered, and then he yelped at the sound of his own voice and fell off the couch.

Flynn, thank fuck, didn’t stir.

“Oh.” Wyatt looked up to find Lucy standing there. “You’re…”

“Nothing happened!” Wyatt blurted out.

Lucy stared at him. “I… um, Wyatt.”

“Yeah, I’m aware, I’m aware.” He grabbed a pillow as Lucy continued to very determinedly look into his eyes. Her cheeks were getting pinker by the second. “Flynn and I went out for a run, we came back, I went to take a quick nap and I couldn’t go back to your room because I didn’t want to disturb you and, uh…”

“I’m glad you’re back,” Lucy said. “How did you do it?”

“I guess it just wore off,” Wyatt replied. He tried not to think about how he’d relaxed around Flynn, like he was unraveling but in a good way, a safe way.

Lucy nodded. “I… thank you for staying with me.”

“Of course. Anytime.” He was literally having this conversation naked since being a werewolf for an entire week meant his clothes were absolutely gone. Great. “You know that we… we don’t see you any differently, right?”

Lucy’s eyes drifted to Flynn like she couldn’t help herself before she snapped them back to Wyatt’s face. “I know you don’t.”

_But he does, _he heard.

“I’ll, um, I’ll just go… I need to shower,” Wyatt finally mumbled, and then he hurried out.

So. That definitely was up there as one of the top ten most awkward mornings of his life.

* * *

Flynn no longer slept like a human.

There was no slow drifting off to sleep, no rising to wakefulness. He closed his eyes and it was like someone turned off the lights, and he was plunged into unconsciousness—only to open his eyes with a snap hours later, fully awake.

Most of the time he had no dreams. Sometimes—they felt not so much like dreams as memories, as replaying his life.

_Will you check my closet for monsters?_

He had promised Iris, promised his little girl he would protect her no matter what, from whatever monsters might come—

Flynn’s eyes snapped open.

The smell of bacon and eggs reached him, and he sat up to look over the back of the couch, searching for the scent of—

It was Rufus.

“Morning sunshine,” Rufus said. “You want some?”

“Uh. Just a little.” Just to remind himself.

“How are you doing, blood wise?” Rufus asked. “Do you need to, uh… I mean… not that I want you chomping on me, but maybe we could draw some blood and give it to you in… I don’t know, a bag? Is that insulting or is it just like getting takeout?”

Flynn snorted. “It… would be better if I could feed off of someone, but I’m doing just fine with the rats and squirrels I can get in the forest.”

“…is that actually helping?”

“It’s keeping me alive, isn’t it?”

“But that can’t be enough for you to actually be healthy.”

Flynn shrugged. “Rats and squirrels are the... um... consider them the Capri Sun of the vampire world.”

Rufus stared at him. “Um. Care to explain what the fuck that means?”

“Juice packets. Or should I say energy drinks? Maybe they're more like Red Bulls.”

“I will pay you money to never mention anything like that again.”

“You asked!”

Rufus opened the fridge. “We’re out of milk.”

“I can go get some.”

Rufus eyed him. Flynn rolled his eyes. “I’ll be fine. You went last time, and Lucy shouldn’t have to go.”

Rufus gave him an odd look at that. “Take Wyatt with you.”

“You need him to guard the bunker.”

“Lucy’s magic will take care of that. None of us should go out alone, you always have him go with Lucy or me when we go on a grocery run.”

Flynn wanted to point out that was because Rufus and Lucy needed some protection and Wyatt just looked like a huge dog, so he was also perfectly disguised. But he suspected that wasn’t going to fly with Rufus all that much.

“Sure. Fine.” Flynn leaned back. “Wyatt?”

He waited for the bouncing, padding sound of four feet as Wyatt skidded to a halt in front of him—it was adorable and Flynn would never tell Wyatt that—but instead he heard shuffling feet and a moment later Wyatt, in human form, emerged.

Flynn stared at him. “Why—when did you—”

“Gee, thanks, Flynn, I feel the love,” Wyatt grumbled. He looked, and smelled, freshly showered. His skin was warm and pink, and his pulse was thrumming slow and steady in his neck, and Flynn’s mouth watered.

“Where’s Lucy?” he asked, hating that he was asking it but needing to know.

“In her room.” Wyatt looked uncomfortable. “She doesn’t really… want to talk to anyone.”

Flynn wasn’t sure if he was able to really get indigestion anymore, but it felt like his stomach was knotting up anyway. “I’m going to the store,” he announced. “Think you can manage to shift back?”

“…yeah, thanks for the confidence.”

“You just spent an entire week stuck as a wolf.” He was curious about why and how Wyatt was able to switch back to being a human, but he wasn’t about to ask.

“Fuck you.”

“I’m leaving in five minutes,” Flynn told him, marching down the hallway. He felt rather like he was heading to stand in front of a firing squad.

Lucy’s door was closed. He knocked quietly, wincing as the sound still managed to echo. “Lucy?”

He could hear her shifting around, could hear Lucy’s pulse pick up. “Yes?”

“I’m… I’m going to the store, do you want anything in particular?”

“Oh. No, I’m… I’m fine. Thank you.”

Flynn pressed his forehead and his palm to the door. He wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what.

On the other side he heard Lucy get up and approach the door, and for a moment he thought she might actually open it, but instead he just heard her pulse, pounding, pounding, pounding.

A wet nose bumped his leg and he jumped, looking down.

Wyatt stood there in wolf form, his tail wagging, his leash held between his teeth. He was giving Flynn a charming doggy smile.

Flynn took the leash. “Let’s go.”

Grocery shopping was fine. Wyatt would nudge with his nose the things he wanted, but for the most part he just followed Flynn around while wagging his tail, his tongue lolling out like grocery shopping with Flynn was the most exciting damn thing in the world.

Flynn had no idea what Lucy might like, but he had to get her something. Her blood had tasted… like…

He grabbed some salt and vinegar potato chips, some mint Milano cookies, and after some deliberation, a large amount of strawberries. For cheesecake.

Wyatt tilted his head and gave Flynn an odd, inquisitive look, and Flynn was grateful that Wyatt couldn’t speak right now.

He also grabbed garlic because yeah it burned the inside of his mouth and usually cramped up his stomach later but fuck if he was going without Italian food.

They got out into the parking lot, and Wyatt ran a few circles around him. “You take one nap and you’re ready to go again, are you insane?”

Wyatt just panted at him.

Flynn loaded everything into the car. There was a park nearby… Wyatt always wolfed down (no pun intended) a fuck ton of food after a transformation, so it was probably best to work him up to an appetite anyway. “All right, fine, one short walk.”

Lucy had to know that what he’d—whatever he might have said when they’d first met, when he’d sensed that her blood was like Cahill’s, that it wasn’t… that he didn’t still… he knew that she was her own person. She trusted that, didn’t she? Surely she knew that?

Wyatt tugged lightly on his leash, trotting happily and preening in the sunlight. “Are you showing off?” Flynn grumbled quietly.

“Oh my God he’s so cute!” a young girl said as she and her friends walked by.

Wyatt preened even more.

“Shameless,” Flynn told him.

They walked in a large circle around the park, giving Wyatt a chance to stretch his legs. Everyone thought Wyatt was the cutest, sweetest dog in the world and Wyatt took every opportunity to be petted, pressing himself up against people, beaming at praise, rolling over for some kids to get his belly rubbed.

Flynn was pretty sure, even if Wyatt wouldn’t admit it, that the real reason for this wasn’t exercise but human interaction. Being social. Werewolf packs could be large, and they were all very touchy. Werewolf homes were multigenerational. Now Wyatt was a wolf with no pack, cooped up with just the same three people, and the only one Flynn could argue Wyatt was close to was Lucy, seeing as he’d been functioning as her bedtime teddy bear for the last week.

So he stopped complaining and let Wyatt have this.

“Your dog is adorable,” someone told him.

Flynn turned, arching an eyebrow at the woman. She was wearing jogging gear—probably out on her daily run. “Thanks.”

“Is he a husky?” the woman asked.

“He’s a mix,” Flynn replied. “I don’t know his, uh, ancestry. We got him from a shelter.”

“We? You and your… wife?”

“I’m not…” Ah, yes, he still wore his wedding ring. “I’m widowed.” The word tasted like ashes in his mouth, and he tried not to make it curl the corners of his lips down, tried to keep it from turning into a snarl.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” The woman put her hand on his arm. “That’s really awful.”

She did sound genuine, but then, people were genuine in their pity, usually. It made it all worse. It made Flynn feel bad for hating them when they did that. If the person was clearly faking, then he felt justified in wanting to rage at them, but when they really did mean well and just didn’t _get _it, what was he supposed to do with that?

“It must be lonely,” the woman went on. “I’m glad you have such a lovely companion, they say dogs help make the whole single thing better. I should probably get one myself.”

“Probably,” Flynn replied, wondering where this was going. The woman probably felt awkward now. Should he have told her he was divorced? He didn’t want to turn this into some weird pity-fest. He didn’t want pity.

There was a growl, and Wyatt was suddenly shoving himself in between Flynn and the woman, practically pressing himself into Flynn’s side, whining and giving Flynn big puppy eyes that seemed to fill with unshed tears.

Wyatt was very good at making himself look pathetic when he wanted to.

“Oh.” The woman took a step back. “Um. Protective, isn’t he?”

Wyatt leveled a terrifying glare at the woman, and then went back to staring up at Flynn adoringly, like the fucking sun rose and set on Flynn.

This was… weird.

“Behave,” he warned Wyatt.

Wyatt just thumped his tail and put his paw on Flynn’s arm, where the woman had. He cocked his head oh so innocently. _Me? All I do is behave, I am a good boy._

“You’re not fooling anyone, Wyatt, cut that out,” Flynn ordered.

Wyatt dropped his paw but stayed pressed to Flynn, then glared at the woman again, his fur bristling.

“I should go,” the woman said. She laughed again, but this time it was weak. “Um, I hope to see you around?”

“Have a good run,” Flynn replied. Clearly they couldn’t come to this park again, at least not at this time of day. They couldn’t afford for people to recognize them.

He went to move, but Wyatt didn’t budge. In fact, he went boneless on Flynn’s feet.

Flynn glared at him. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Wyatt whined up at him and sniffled, then waved his paw in the air, dangling it like it had been hurt.

“Oh you big lying baby. Get up, your paw is fine.”

Wyatt just whined again, and honest to God shed a tear.

“I hate you.” Flynn bent down and picked Wyatt up, so that Wyatt was now draped over his shoulder. “You’re the one who wanted to come here, you’re the one who insisted we go to the park.”

Wyatt’s tail wagged like a fucking windshield wiper in a torrential downpour the entire way back to the car. A few people noticed Flynn carrying him and smiled or laughed, but nobody bothered approaching them again.

Judging by the smug look on Wyatt’s face when Flynn set him down at the car, that had been his plan all along.

* * *

Lucy waited until she was sure that Flynn and Wyatt were gone before she emerged from her room.

How exactly was she supposed to handle this? How exactly did one say to one’s roommate, _I’m sorry that my family is apparently a part of a secret coven that poisoned you with a virus that’s slowly killing you_?

Rufus was sitting on the couch, laptop open, chuckling to himself.

“Funny movie?” Lucy asked.

Rufus shook his head and tilted the laptop screen at her. “I’m making vampire memes for Flynn.”

_I don’t always drink rat blood, _the most interesting man in the world said on one of them, _but when I do, it’s because I’m having another existential crisis about the humanity I’m not sure I still have and whether or not it’s right to drink the blood of men when I used to be one of them._

Lucy snorted in spite of herself. “I’m not sure if Flynn would appreciate that.”

“Oh, I don’t care if he appreciates it, _I’m _dying,” Rufus replied.

Lucy grinned at him, then got up and went to get something to eat. “How’s Jiya? Is she okay?”

“She probably wants to talk to you,” Rufus said. “She… we all had no idea she was a witch. She had no idea she was a witch.”

“Sometimes magic, especially something as unpredictable as time magic, can take a long time to manifest,” Lucy replied. “Honestly, I don’t know of anyone who has time magic for the present or future the way that she does. It’s only… theoretical.” She paused. Swallowed. “Rittenhouse can’t get their hands on her.”

“They won’t,” Rufus said, and he sounded like he actually believed it. Like nothing could shake his conviction.

“You’re a really great person, Rufus,” Lucy said, seized by a sudden deep rush of affection. “I hope you know that.”

Rufus smiled at her, a bit softer than his usual grin. “Thanks, Lucy. You’re not too bad yourself.”

There was the sound of running feet and yelping, and then Flynn yelling, and then Wyatt yelling, and then both men burst in—Wyatt back as a human—carrying groceries and arguing.

“She was totally flirting with you!” Wyatt was saying, waving his hands in the air and making the grocery bags sway dangerously.

“What?” Lucy asked, her voice coming out more sharply than she’d intended, something twisting in her stomach.

“This woman was flirting with Flynn and he refuses to believe it.” Wyatt dumped the groceries onto the counter. “She put her hand on your arm, man.”

“She was being sympathetic!”

“Did she feel that you’re like a fucking popsicle?” Wyatt groused. “Being carried by you is like being held by a marble statue.”

“If you didn’t want to be carried by me you shouldn’t have gone boneless!” Flynn snapped.

“You carried him?” Rufus sounded highly amused by this.

“We’re not talking about it,” Flynn grumbled.

“Fine by me,” Wyatt snapped.

“What just happened?” Lucy asked as Wyatt stormed off.

Flynn shrugged. “I don’t even pretend to know what’s going on in that idiot’s head.”

Lucy decided not to mention that for someone who thought Wyatt was an idiot, Flynn sure spent a lot of time running around in the woods with him.

Flynn glanced at her, and Lucy realized that they were now alone. Well, Rufus was on the couch, but Rufus was suddenly very interested in his laptop again, making more memes.

“I’ll get out of your way,” she said, moving to slip past Flynn.

Flynn didn’t physically stop her, but she could feel his gaze like a hand on her shoulder. “Lucy, I—what I said, when we first met—I didn’t know you, I was raging, I—”

“You were right, though.” She looked up into his eyes and saw that there was no red in them. “I am Rittenhouse.”

“You’re not. Your blood isn’t…” Flynn gestured at himself. “Trust me, I know, the irony of a vampire saying that blood doesn’t matter. But it doesn’t. Everyone bleeds red, Lucy. You can have a rich man and a poor man, a Black man and an Asian man and a white man, a woman, a trans woman, a person who doesn’t know what they are—they all bleed the same. You want to stop these people. You believed me, when nobody else did. You’re keeping me alive right now. You’re… you’re not your father, certainly not your father you’ve never met.”

“But am I my mother?”

“We don’t know she’s…”

“We also don’t know that—she could have lied to me on the phone, she could have faked Amy’s room being ransacked—”

“You’re not your mother,” Flynn said, a hint of a vampiric growl entering his voice.

Lucy paused. “I don’t like my magic,” she blurted out. “Or, I mean—I like researching. I like history. But time magic is so rare, and mine’s so strong, and I got it so young…”

Over on the couch, Rufus had somehow acquired those large noise-cancelling headphones and was now wearing them.

“My mom always pushed for me to be in the spotlight, to be a symbol and I never—I never wanted that and now I can’t help but wonder if she wanted me to be a symbol not just for witches but for a specific group, a specific agenda, and I just want you to know that I’m not. I won’t be. I’m not—”

“You’re not the only one who has to readjust their image of who they are,” Flynn said softly.

Lucy realized that her breathing was coming in fast and hard again and she struggled to inhale slowly.

Flynn glanced at Rufus, then, of all things, offered Lucy his arm. Like they were in Victorian times instead of a stuffy ‘50s Cold War bunker.

Lucy took it.

“The groceries can wait,” Flynn explained. “You should get some air.”

He led her up out of the bunker, into the trees, and immediately Lucy could breathe more easily. She kept holding onto Flynn, though. Just in case, although in case of what, she wasn’t sure.

“I had a brother, once,” Flynn said, after some time had passed.

Lucy looked at him. “You had?”

He nodded. “Gabriel.” He stared up at the leaves above them. Even in California, there were enough leaves changing color to paint the forest in shades of yellow, gold, orange, and red. Like a sea of silent fire. “He was from… her and her first husband.”

Lucy stopped walking. “I thought vampires and humans couldn’t…”

“They can’t.” Flynn took in a deep breath. “Or, they can, but… people say that they can’t, full stop, because it’s easier to just tell people that they can’t have children than to tell them the truth: that they might have a child, but it will be sick. Its two natures can’t… can’t hold out, together, and that child will die. It will be slow, and painful, and then it will be sudden, and the next thing you know the son who was playing on your balcony is now lying dead.”

Lucy inhaled sharply, recalling the memory she had yanked out of Flynn to get the blood rage to leave him.

“I wonder what my mother would think, knowing that I was… that I became this, and how I became it.” Flynn resumed walking, and Lucy followed, still holding onto him. He was cold, as Wyatt had said—or rather, there was no heat coming from inside him. She didn’t mind. “I grew up with that shadow, with knowing that of the two vampires I had in my history, both had died. And now I might be next.” He looked at her. “So there. Now you know my secrets, and I know yours.”

“I didn’t ask to know yours.”

“No, but I… I want someone, at least, to know me. When it feels like I can’t know myself. It’s only… an added benefit, that it evens the score between us.”

“I wish I didn’t have magic,” Lucy whispered. She had never admitted that out loud, not even to Amy. It felt like a betrayal of—not her mother, or her kind, but of herself. How could she hate a part of herself?

“I wish I was human,” Flynn replied. “Even though I know—vampires aren’t as bad or so on as stories say. I still… I miss breathing. I miss dreaming normally, I miss feeling warm, I miss my heart picking up speed when I’m excited, I…” He gave her a small, embarrassed smile, and Lucy suspected that if he were, indeed, still human, he would be blushing. “I know it’s ridiculous. To miss breathing.”

“It’s not ridiculous at all.” Lucy wasn’t sure why her voice came out hushed. “I… I don’t know why you’re the easiest to talk to.”

“Oh, that’s easy. It’s because we’re both geniuses.”

She laughed, and Flynn looked inordinately pleased with himself. “Shall we go see what nonsense Wyatt got up to while we left him unsupervised?”

Lucy let him turn her around, and if her head tilted to her left and settled against his shoulder as they walked… Flynn didn’t seem all that opposed to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I shamelessly stole from:  
https://bolontiku.tumblr.com/post/180281244015/dontbeanassbutt-nuka-rockit-remember-kids  
https://positive-memes.tumblr.com/post/181308631450/lazy-doggos  
https://extasiswings.tumblr.com/post/185177775581/fivemanwaltz-teethingpains-folkvillainess


	7. Chapter 7

Rufus hated that he couldn’t give Jiya a call.

It made sense, of course, for a number of perfectly logical reasons but he just wanted to be able to call her and reach out, because Jiya was sometimes independent to a fault and he worried that she was keeping too much bottled up inside of her instead of letting people support her and be there for her the way they wanted to.

The way that he wanted to.

Anyway—they were friends, and he wanted to be able to call his friend and talk with her. Even if she just wanted to shoot the breeze and didn’t want to talk about her whole witch time vision thing.

Instead, he had to just hope that she would call him when she was ready.

In the meantime, it wasn’t like he didn’t have anything to do. He still had to figure out what exactly Rittenhouse did to make this virus, and how he could get it out of Flynn’s system. Near as he could figure, this virus basically activated the hormones in vampires that made them go into a blood rage, and it kept activating those hormones while attacking and shutting down the hormones that attempted to stop it. Being in a blood rage was incredibly draining and exhausting. It was like constantly running on adrenaline. The body just couldn’t handle it and would eventually collapse—except, of course, this was a vampire so they’d collapse after they’d ripped the throats out of quite a few people along the way.

Rufus shuddered to think of how they’d come up with this virus. They must’ve needed vampire blood for it, and he doubted that those vampires had volunteered willingly. What annoyed him was…

The phone rang.

Rufus practically dove for it, ignoring the look Wyatt sent him. Wyatt could just shut the fuck up, since he was alternating between begging for Flynn’s attention (in wolf form) and doing everything he could to avoid Flynn (in human form) and arguing, very loudly, with Flynn in between. Of course, this was all when Wyatt wasn’t busy following Lucy around in wolf form in the hopes she would pet him, a literal example of puppy love. Jesus Christ.

“Hello?” Rufus answered, as if he didn’t know who it was. Who else would possibly be calling?

Agent Christopher, maybe. She’d taken the phone from Jiya once, and then somehow Flynn had gotten a hold of the phone on the bunker end, and they’d ended up yelling at each other. Flynn mentioning the whole ‘secretly married to a human’ thing probably hadn’t helped the situation.

“Hey, Rufus.” It was Jiya. Rufus sat back down in front of his lab equipment.

“Hey. You don’t sound as tired. You getting some sleep?”

“Yeah, a bit. Mason gave me some pills that help. I don’t like the idea of shutting Amy out but I have to stop the visions so I can rest somehow.”

“Is she… okay?”

There was a long, long pause on the other end of the line. Then Jiya said, quietly, “Sometimes she is. Sometimes she’s not. It… depends.”

“What do you mean?”

“I—you know how we, uh, had that discussion the other day?”

“You mean the argument where you refused to listen to me when I said that the future isn’t set in stone and I refused to listen to you about the importance of your belief in a higher power and we were both assholes?”

“Yeah, that one.” He could hear Jiya’s smile in her voice. He knew he was smiling back like an idiot but he didn’t care. He liked that they could disagree, and they could find a way to apologize and move forward. “I… I do still believe in a higher power. I’m not saying that I don’t. But I think you may be right that the future isn’t set. Because my visions keep changing. The worst one—the worst one she was—dead. But I’ve had visions since then and she’s alive. So I don’t—I don’t know. I’m just trying to hope.”

“You’re helping us save her,” Rufus promised her. “Every bit of information you give us from her helps us to find her. Lucy appreciates it. I know she does.”

“Lucy’s been very sweet.” Jiya sighed. “So has Mason. He feels like shit. I think he’s trying to placate Rittenhouse, he won’t tell me much—I don’t know, though. They’ve got plans, Rufus, and I don’t like it. I think there’s a very good reason that there wasn’t a vampire put on this task force and I don’t think it was just that they’re proud as shit and refused.”

“I think so too.” Rufus tapped the table with the lab equipment, as if Jiya could see it, as if he could show it to her. He wanted to show it to her. “I’ve figured out how the virus works, I think. What frustrates me is that Rittenhouse apparently made this virus that’ll turn every vampire out there into a raging lunatic, I mean, Flynn’s real lucky that he’s held out for as long as he has. I think he was close do dying there when we got him.” If Lucy hadn’t insisted on her and Wyatt feeding Flynn, Rufus was pretty sure Flynn would have died. “Did they have any idea how easily Flynn could’ve passed that virus on? What if someone he killed he just accidentally turned into a vampire instead? They’d have the virus, too. What if there was a whole squad of infected vampires out there?”

“I want to know what they thought they would accomplish,” Jiya mused. “What does a rampaging vampire get them? If anything, Flynn’s caused problems for them.”

“Having a task force take him out for good publicity, maybe? Alienate everyone else from vampires?”

“Yeah, but why? And a virus—Flynn sounds to me like someone who would’ve gone to get revenge, blood rage or no, so—”

“Oh my God,” Rufus breathed.

“…what?”

“I don’t have to create an antivirus, or a cure, or whatever,” Rufus said, tripping over his words in his own excitement. “Fuck, Jiya, what if—Rittenhouse wants control, right? They’re elitist pricks, they think having magic makes them better than everyone else. So hear me out—they create this virus and infect this guy who’s sniffing too close. They expect him to go on a rampage and create a big scene, and then—then they’ll swoop in and they’ll _cure him_. Bam! Suddenly Rittenhouse is the only group of people who can control these dangerous vampires. Rittenhouse gets control over vampires, they earn the trust of humans…”

“You’re a genius,” Jiya whispered. “A motherfucking genius—I could kiss you!”

Rufus froze.

On the other end of the line, he heard Jiya’s breathing stop.

“Um,” Jiya said.

“Uh,” Rufus replied, very eloquently.

Wyatt, who had been sitting on the couch, got up and walked out of the room.

“Fuck you and your superhearing!” Rufus yelled after him. “At least put on some headphones like a decent person!”

“What?”

“Wyatt,” Rufus replied, answering Jiya’s question. “Um, did you—did you really mean—would you?”

Jiya was silent only for about two seconds, but they were the longest two seconds of Rufus’s life.

“I’ve wanted to for a long time,” she said. “But I didn’t… want to ruin whatever it was we had.”

“Ruin it,” Rufus told her.

Jiya’s laugh echoed over the phone line, bright and full.

* * *

Lucy enjoyed Wyatt as her heavy, warm lap-blanket, and flipped through another book. Denise wanted to do this properly, the legal way, but if Rufus was right about his hypothesis, Lucy didn’t much care.

Rufus was no closer to finding a cure for Flynn now than he had been a month ago, and Lucy was of the opinion that if her mother really was Rittenhouse, if her biological father was Rittenhouse, then she didn’t want to just sit on her hands and go about this legally. Her mother wanted Lucy to use her magic? She’d use her magic all right—she’d use it to find the Rittenhouse facility where they had Flynn’s cure and she’d rip their pasts from them until they gave it to her.

Lucy realized that she had a fistful of Wyatt’s fur in her hand and was tugging on it angrily. She let go, forcing her fingers to unbend, to flex, to relax. Wyatt just wuffled softly, still asleep.

She could do it, couldn’t she? If she just touched her mother… but then Carol would know that Lucy suspected her. She could see the history of a person through a personal object of theirs, but only the parts of their life where they’d had that object on their person.

Perhaps the best course of action would be to just—go home. When Carol wasn’t there, of course.

She knew that Rittenhouse wouldn’t—or rather she knew that Carol Preston wouldn’t—have unleashed a virus on Flynn without a backup plan, a means to control it. It was unfortunate for Rittenhouse, and lucky for everyone else, that the man they’d chosen as their target was somehow stubborn and smart enough to stay alive for two years and get the information to hit Rittenhouse back, and hard, instead of just going on a random rampage.

Lucy wondered if Flynn knew how much of a hero he was for that.

She doubted he saw it, or himself, that way.

Wyatt stirred, stretched, and gave a large yawn. Lucy patted his head. “You want more cuddles?”

Wyatt seemed to shrug, then sat up, sniffing the air. He was able to shift back and forth regularly now, or at least he seemed to be—if it was otherwise, he hadn’t told Lucy about it—but he was spending most of his time as a wolf. He seemed to prefer himself that way.

Lucy scratched his ears. “You know… we like you, whichever form you’re in. If you’re staying a wolf for us, you don’t have to.”

Wyatt seemed to look guilty and glanced away.

“I know you’ve said that being a wolf and being a person is different but, I don’t think it’s so different…” She kept scratching his ears, which relaxed him a bit. “I think if you acted as a human the way you do as a wolf, you’d like yourself better.”

Wyatt had been listening to quite a lot of Lucy’s confessions over the last month they’d been at this. It was easy to pretend that her words wouldn’t have consequences when she was talking to someone who couldn’t talk back, and talking to someone who was listening felt better than talking just to thin air. Surely, having heard all her frustrations and ranting and fear, he couldn’t be under the illusion that she was any better than he was.

Wyatt looked up at her, his eyes large and soft, and then turned his head to lick her palm where she’d been petting him. Then he got down off the couch and padded off. Either to transform or go on a walk, or both.

She was just wondering if she should follow him and maybe, if he had transformed into a human, talk to him more about this, when Rufus yelled, “Lucy!”

There was panic in his voice—contained panic that he was probably trying to swallow, but it was still there.

Lucy leapt to her feet, the book falling to the floor, and ran down the hallway to Rufus’s room.

Rufus was standing on one side, close to the wall. Lab equipment was thrown everywhere. Glass was shattered on the floor. Gripping the edge of a desk, eyes red, fingers sinking into the wood and warping it, was Flynn.

Lucy didn’t even think, she just grabbed him. Flynn snarled and she hated this, she hated that he was like this and couldn’t control it, betrayed by his own blood, and she hated what she had to do to stop it, to save him.

She reached for a memory, any memory. There were flashes—the woman she now recognized as Maria, a tall man who looked a lot like Flynn who she assumed was Asher, his father, and Lorena and Iris, of course, but—

_Lucy is sitting at the table, a hand covering her mouth. She’s laughing. The corners of her eyes are crinkling up, and Flynn can’t help but smile back at her, he can’t help—_

Lucy shoved the memory away from both of them, gasping for air—

_Running with Wyatt in the woods, Wyatt’s the only one who can keep up with him like this, sprinting, Wyatt howling—_

She staggered back, releasing Flynn, who sank to his knees. His eyes were normal again.

“I’m sorry,” Rufus blurted out. “Fuck, shit, fuck, I was trying something and it didn’t work—well obviously it didn’t work.”

Lucy crouched down. Flynn was breathing heavily, not like he was out of oxygen and needed it, but like he was making himself breathe so that the motion would ground him.

_I miss breathing_, he had told her, once.

“Garcia,” she whispered.

Rufus swiped a hand across his face and gingerly stepped around the glass, muttering about getting a broom.

Flynn wouldn’t look at her. Lucy wasn’t sure if she was allowed to touch him or not. “Garcia,” she said again. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever said his first name before.

Flynn looked up at her, then. “You should step back,” he said. His voice was unbelievably rough, scraped up from the bottom of a coffin, like he hadn’t spoken in decades. Centuries.

“You’re not dangerous,” Lucy replied. She was still whispering for some reason. “You didn’t hurt Rufus.”

“I nearly did. I was trying not to, it took—everything—”

“You did, you held back, you succeeded.”

Flynn stood up abruptly and Lucy nearly fell back, only just managing to scramble and get up onto her feet as well before she landed on her ass. “Why do you keep doing that!?” Flynn hissed.

“Doing _what_!?” Lucy replied.

“Treating me like I’m—I’m not—I am not something redeemable, Lucy!” Flynn snapped.

Lucy felt, oddly enough, as if he’d slapped her. “You don’t get to tell me how to behave or who is and isn’t worth my time.”

“I’m not—” Flynn made an impatient _tssking _sort of noise. “What I am, it’s only—this is a stopgap, what you’re doing, it’s only a matter of time until my body gives in and shuts down, and we both know it.”

“Not if we find the cure,” Lucy pointed out.

“There is no cure.”

“Rufus thinks there is. That Rittenhouse made one. I think we could—if my mom is Rittenhouse, if we go back to my home we could—”

Flynn was already shaking his head. “No. No, absolutely not, we are not—you can’t risk yourself for me, Lucy.”

“I get to decide what to do with myself, my magic, and my life!” Lucy found herself yelling, felt like she was ripping into the fabric of the air itself, and took a steadying step back from Flynn. They had nearly been chest to chest. “And I decided that you are—you are redeemable, Flynn. At least, you are to me.” She drew herself up, trying to speak with an authority she didn’t feel. “And if you don’t agree, that’s fine, but you don’t get to stop me, either.”

Flynn was staring at her with a gobsmacked expression on his face, and he looked painfully human. If someone had told her then that this was a vampire in front of her and an unusually strong one at that, Lucy wouldn’t have believed them. He seemed like he’d fall over if she so much as breathed on him.

“Lucy…” Flynn looked away, something indescribably aching and painful crossing his face, like an old scar reopened, and then he looked back at her. “When I lost my family, when I was turned, the way that I was, I prayed to God for answers. I was never—Lorena was the devoted Catholic, not me. But I tried. I tried, and you know what I got back? Nothing. Maybe there is no answer for me. Maybe the ending to this is that we use—we use what Rittenhouse did to me to show the world what they are, what their motives are. Maybe that’s all we have.”

Lucy swallowed. It felt like nails were stuck in her throat. “Or maybe He led you to me,” she replied. “I know I can do this, Flynn, I can go home and I can find… whatever it is that my mother is up to, I can find the cure for you. You have to at least accept that I’m trying.”

“Why?” Flynn asked. “After all that I did—”

“You were basically drugged up and let loose, Flynn.” Now Lucy was the one finding herself looking away, unable to bear his gaze instead of the other way around. “Even when you were dying, you didn’t want to drink from me or Wyatt. You—you were so gentle about it.”

Flynn stared at her. “I—I wasn’t sure how much of that I remembered properly and how much of that was…” He shook his head. “Drinking blood from someone can create a false bond, Lucy, it can make you think—”

“It’s not false, Flynn, unless you consider us all living together for over a month false!” This was truly the most frustrating man on the entire planet. “I’ve done my research too, I’ve talked to Rufus, I know that when you drink from someone, they’re not the only one that’s vulnerable, you’re vulnerable too. And in those moments, you weren’t—you weren’t raging or holding onto us like rag dolls. Wyatt _orgasmed _you made it feel so go—”

Lucy clapped a hand over her mouth and wished that her time magic meant she could actually travel in time. Then she could go back ten seconds and never say that last sentence.

Flynn went goggle-eyed. “He—_what_.”

“Please do not let him know that you know that, he might actually die,” Lucy whispered, lowering her hand. “But Flynn… we felt _good_. We felt safe, and you were—you were good about it. You weren’t some monster, you weren’t just sucking us dry even if—even if in that moment I would’ve understood it, you were dying. And ever since then, you’ve been—you’ve looked out for all of us. You’ve looked out for me.”

“Wyatt’s looked out for you. Or was that someone else being your living pillow the last month?”

“More than one person can look out for me,” Lucy replied evenly. “Who takes me out on walks when I’m claustrophobic?”

She dared to step forward, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to reach out and touch him, as much as she wanted to. “You told me you miss _breathing_, Garcia. That’s not something a monster says.”

Flynn tried to snort, but it came out wrong, too weak, too raw. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it,” he said, so quiet and rough it felt like he was giving her something sacred, like he was pledging something.

Rufus walked back in, broom in hand, and paused. “Uh…”

“You should go for a run with Wyatt,” Lucy said. She couldn’t have said why her voice sounded like she’d been crying for hours. “It’ll help.”

Flynn nodded, or maybe he bowed, or both somehow, and then he walked out.

Rufus looked at her, but Lucy just shook her head. She didn’t know what to say to explain what was going on. “I have a plan,” she said instead.

“Call Jiya,” Rufus replied, and Lucy couldn’t say how she knew they were having an entirely different conversation than it sounded like they were, and yet, she did.

Maybe that was what having friends meant.

* * *

Wyatt was pacing his room when Flynn stuck his head in and said shortly, “we’re going on a run.”

“Yeah, sure, thanks for asking so nicely Flynn, appreciate it,” Wyatt replied.

Flynn just closed the door on him.

It wasn’t like Wyatt had been in the middle of anything other than his usual crisis. He had been thinking about what Lucy had said earlier. _I think if you acted as a human the way you do as a wolf, you’d like yourself better._

He and Jess had—she’d been the way he’d known who he was. He’d identified himself by her. And then he’d just tried to be… all the things he was told a man was supposed to be. And now he had neither, he was stuck in this bunker, in this weird bubble where the rest of the world didn’t seem to really exist. Even when he went out, like to the park, that was as a wolf, not a person. Not as… as _Wyatt_.

Who was Wyatt?

Not Jess’s husband. Not that Logan boy. Not a soldier. Nobody expected a wolf to be anything but everyone expected him to be something, even Denise gave him a role, told him how to take Flynn down so that he could ‘represent’ his people. _It’ll look good for us._ Good publicity, being a symbol and not a person, an individual…

Flynn stuck his head in again. “Daylight’s wasting.”

“You’re nocturnal!” Wyatt snapped, but he started getting undressed so he could shift.

Flynn rolled his eyes and closed the door again.

Transforming into the wolf was always the easy part. Bones elongating, snapping, the sound of his pulse hard in his ears like drums, like drowning, his blood rushing like water, twisting and turning and writhing—it was never _fun_, but it was quick and he was used to it.

He’d been told by humans (Rufus, specifically) that it was the sound of the transformation that was so upsetting to people. That they could hear the body contorting into something it very much shouldn’t be and it made shivers run up their spine. Wyatt didn’t blame them.

He shook himself out once he was fully in wolf form, then nudged his door open by pawing at the handle and then shoving his nose in between and wriggling. Flynn was leaning back against the wall, arms folded, looking like something out of a fucking magazine.

Wyatt hated how attractive Flynn was. It was fucking unfair. Most vampires had a sort of… extra edge to them. They were almost too good looking to be true, and in fact it was unsettling. There was just something that told you that someone that beautiful _wasn’t _human. It set off the alarm bells in your head. But Flynn still looked… well, human. Real. Solid.

“Shall we?” Flynn pushed himself off the wall and headed out. Wyatt could’ve, theoretically, kept up with Flynn while in human form, but he wasn’t sure that Flynn would want that.

He wasn’t sure Flynn liked him in human form.

Which sucked, because the only time he really felt alive was when he was doing something with Flynn. Just like the only times he felt grounded and useful were with Lucy. Okay maybe he had a crush on Lucy but that was neither here nor there. Lucy, at least, liked him human. Or would if he was himself, whatever that meant, whoever that might be.

“I want to do something different,” Flynn said as they emerged into the late afternoon sun. “I want you to give me a ten second head start. And then I want you to chase me—and don’t hold back. I want—I need to fight. Is that all right?”

He’d never fought Flynn since that last time when Flynn had nearly died, when the virus had nearly killed him. Wyatt didn’t like to think about that. The idea of Flynn dying, once his eventual goal, now made him feel sick, made his fur stand on end.

But at least their previous fights had proven that Flynn could more than hold his own with Wyatt. If Flynn really needed to get something out of his system… sure. Wyatt could do that. If that was the only way he could be close to Flynn—

Not that he—

Anyway.

He nodded, and even closed his eyes so that he couldn’t see which direction Flynn took off in. He thought he saw a smile flit briefly across Flynn’s face right before he closed his eyes, but he couldn’t open them again to check. Instead he just counted.

When he sniffed the air, he could catch the barest whiff of Flynn on the wind. Something sharp, tangy, like iron, and a deep ancient salty scent like the ocean, and leather.

He took off through the trees.

Flynn was good, damn good, but Wyatt had spent his youth chasing Jess through the wilds of their home and he was an excellent tracker when it came to—well, he’d been an excellent tracker when it came to Jess. He was just good at it with Flynn, too. Flynn couldn’t evade him forever. It took him a few minutes, but he caught up with him, a wild dark streak up ahead to his right, and Wyatt growled low in his throat.

One, two, three, four, five loud, thudding heartbeats later and he caught up with him, braced himself, did a flying leap and landed square in the middle of Flynn’s back. They rolled, biting and snarling, claws tearing, over and over. Flynn was fighting in a completely different way than he had when Wyatt had engaged him while Flynn was in a blood rage. He was a lot more controlled right now, had a lot more finesse, but it also felt like he was goading Wyatt, trying to get Wyatt to hit him harder, to injure him.

Wyatt was a little heavier than Flynn in wolf form and he used it to his advantage, getting Flynn facedown on the ground and literally sitting on him.

Flynn grunted and glared. “What the fuck kind of move is that.”

Then he did something, some kicking-out-flipping movement that sent Wyatt tumbling and Flynn got his teeth in Wyatt’s throat, forcing Wyatt to hold still or risk literally tearing his own throat out.

“_That’s _how you pin someone,” Flynn said around his mouthful.

Wyatt shivered and then growled to try and cover it up.

Flynn pulled back, ready for another round, but Wyatt backed off. He was panting hard but still definitely good for more, but he didn’t—he didn’t like the look in Flynn’s eyes. The look that said _hurt me_.

He didn’t want to hurt Flynn. Flynn was the person Wyatt felt safe with, the person Wyatt felt relaxed with, like the tight coil inside of him was at last releasing, fuck he’d been so jealous when Flynn had taken his attention off him for even a moment in the park, he—

—oh _no_.

He had transformed back into a human after napping _with Flynn_. Flynn was—oh fuck, how had that happened!?

Flynn was looking at him oddly. “Wyatt?”

He thought about Flynn, about lying with his head on Flynn’s lap, Flynn’s hand in his soft fur, no, his hair, warm and safe…

And something uncoiled, unknotted, warmth lighting up inside.

Wyatt shifted back with a groan.

“I’m not going to beat you up,” he said, instead of all the other things that were cramming up the inside of his mouth. “Whatever you’re doing to punish yourself, I’m not gonna be a part of it.”

Flynn glared at him. “I’m…”

“Don’t lie to me, okay? You and Lucy weren’t exactly quiet earlier.”

Flynn looked away.

If Wyatt was a wolf, still, he’d nuzzle Flynn’s hand, try and comfort him. _I think if you acted as a human the way you act as a wolf…_

He reached out, wrapping his hand around the back of Flynn’s neck, and pressed their foreheads together.

“Whatever it is, um, I want to be here for you, okay man? I uh… I was shit at being there for Jess, and this is like, the opposite of what Denise wants me to do but fuck her, right? We want to be there for you. Let us be there.”

Flynn’s gaze searched his, a painfully intimate gesture given that their faces were literally about an inch apart. Wyatt felt like his heart was trying to leap out of his body and fling itself at Flynn’s feet for him to sink his fangs into.

“You can feed on me, if it’ll help you believe me,” Wyatt added. “You can tell what someone’s feeling when you feed on them, right? You can tell if they’re lying or something?”

Flynn shook his head. “I won’t—feed on you.”

_What if I suddenly just now realized that I really, really want you to because you’re my anchor? _Wyatt definitely did not say that.

Flynn got up and Wyatt’s hand slid off him. “We should head back.” He eyed Wyatt. “You might want to shift unless you want Lucy to see you like that.”

Oh fuck.

He really hated how transforming ruined his clothes.

* * *

Jiya glanced around the office as she waited for Rufus to pick up the phone. It was the worst timing for the two of them to admit their feelings, because she couldn’t tell anyone about it, so she had to smother the stupid grin that threatened to spill across her face all the time.

But at the same time—well, it felt like she suddenly understood those ridiculous songs like _I’m Walkin’ On Sunshine_.

“I have never been so damn glad to hear your voice,” Rufus said when he picked up.

“What if I had been Denise?” Jiya replied.

“Then I would grovel appropriately,” Rufus answered. “I miss you,” he added, more quietly.

“I miss you. I want… I want to actually hang out with you without having to stifle all the stupid things I want to do. I want to rest my head on your shoulder, ridiculous sappy stuff like that.”

“I love that you call the most basic intimate physical behavior as ridiculous and sappy. You’re so prickly, like a hedgehog.”

“Ah, the majestic hedgehog, the kind of animal that all people want to be compared to,” Jiya replied. She was smiling like an idiot and she knew that Rufus could hear it in her voice.

“Listen, you know I could talk to you forever, or at least for an hour or so until the next crisis happens here like Wyatt trying to eat chocolate and throwing up again, but I think you should talk to Lucy.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s… I mean, aside from whatever’s going on between her and Wyatt and Flynn, she’s fine. She’s got a plan—she wants to go to her mom’s house and find out where the lab is, wherever Rittenhouse is keeping the cure for Flynn’s virus.”

“The cure that only theoretically exists.”

“Yup. I think, between the two of you, with your magic, if you work together…”

“Makes sense to me. I think—I think I’m getting better at targeting my visions. I’ve been working with Mason and I can get into them on my own now, instead of just when I’m asleep. If I can… see what’s going on with Rittenhouse, make sure the coast is clear, or even find the virus cure… if it exists…”

“Exactly. I’ll grab her for you—” Rufus cut himself off. “I love you.”

Jiya exhaled slowly, carefully. It was still so new. “I love you,” she replied. She had to cover her face with her hand, feeling embarrassed at the light, giddy feeling inside of her, even though nobody was around to see it.

The next person on the line was Lucy. “Hey, how is everything? How’s… how’s Amy?”

Jiya breathed carefully, for entirely different reasons than she did with Rufus. “Um. It—it’s going to depend on what we do. The future isn’t certain. I thought it was. I dreamt about things happening to Rufus and they happened. But what I see happening to Amy changes. I think it’s up to us, to make it end well or… not well.” She didn’t elaborate.

“I can… if you…” Lucy sounded like she was struggling with something. Fighting someone. Fighting herself. “I keep Flynn’s blood rage at bay by diving into his memories. It brings back his humanity by plunging him into… the most visceral memories he has, and bringing him into that history also brings back the emotions. I can manipulate people that way. So if you—if you tell me some of the possible futures, I could avoid those, and I could…”

“Are you suggesting a team up?” Jiya asked, half serious and half trying to inject some kind of levity into this situation so that Lucy would start sounding less like she was walking to the gallows.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Denise won’t like it. She wants to do this—”

“I know how Denise wants to do it.” Lucy’s voice was sharp. “I know that she’s got herself and her family to think about and that’s why she’s being careful. And believe me, using my magic like this is the last thing I want to do. I hate that I can hurt people with it. That I can control them this way. It’s not what I asked for but it’s what I have and if I have to use it to save Flynn—to save our supernatural community, then I will.”

The thing was, large wars were fought with no personal investment. They were fought like that all the time. But they never started out that way. Somewhere, someone felt it personally. Someone had a reason to fight. And it was those smaller wars that were the most vicious. The very start of the fighting, when it was just a handful of people—that, Jiya felt, was when it was the bloodiest.

“It’s okay to say you’re doing it for him,” Jiya said.

“I’m doing it for more than just him,” Lucy replied. “For myself. For my sister. For Wyatt, because God knows Rittenhouse will go after werewolves next. For Rufus because humans—people without magic are so resilient but they’re also so vulnerable.”

“But you’re also doing it for Flynn,” Jiya repeated. “And that’s okay.”

“He doesn’t seem to think so.” Lucy kept talking before Jiya could reply to that. “We’ll coordinate something, then. You’ll see what you can find and we’ll work from there?”

“Give me all you can on your mother, on your research, that’ll help.” Jiya drummed her fingers against the desk. “Could you—could you put Rufus back on?”

“Of course.”

There was a bit of silence, and muffled shuffling, then, “Did you miss me?”

Jiya smiled. “Oh, terribly.”


	8. Chapter 8

Flynn swished the water around in his mouth, then spat it out into the sink. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror as he wiped at his mouth. These mirrors weren’t backed by silver or anything mixed with silver, so he could see his reflection. He tried to avoid that when possible.

He’d been trying to avoid a lot of things, lately.

The hunger scratched at the back of his stomach like a wounded animal. He ignored it. Draining rats and squirrels and other small forest animals only did so much. He needed human blood, really, to stay alive. Or perhaps something like a deer. A deer would be great. But God forbid he find one of those this close to civilization.

Surviving, that was what he was doing. He was surviving.

But not… not ever satisfied. Not even when he’d been tearing into Rittenhouse people—that hadn’t felt—that had felt wrong, sickening, like indulging in cheap gas station junk food and then throwing it all up afterwards and thinking that it wasn’t worth it.

He wanted that feeling of being _full_, of being okay, like he could _breathe…_

He had felt that way, once, a traitorous part of his mind whispered.

Flynn put away his toothbrush and splashed cold water on his face.

When he’d fed on Lucy and Wyatt. He had taken too much, trying to drag himself back from the brink of death, and he knew he’d crossed the line but he’d felt so fucking sated he’d passed out like a log afterwards.

Had Wyatt really…?

He’d tasted it, but he’d thought maybe that was his own imagination, drinking from someone willing after so long, drinking until he was full.

Lucy had also—she’d had that same honeyed edge to her blood. But she—well if she had, she hadn’t mentioned it.

Lucy was another thing he’d been avoiding.

The last time she’d yanked him out of the blood rage, she had done it by finding memories of her. A memory of him making her laugh over coffee. She’d passed out in his bed after talking all night and when she’d woken up, he’d made a joke about her being a ‘gentle and responsive lover’. The look on her face had him snorting his coffee up his nose and Lucy had laughed in response, covering her mouth, and he’d felt so goddamn alive in that moment he could’ve sworn he’d heard his heart beating in his ears just like when he was human.

She’d found one of him with Wyatt, too, running through the forest, feeling like thank fuck, here was someone who kept up with him, who clashed with him and challenged him and seemed willing to let Flynn assert the strange new dominance that awoke in him as a vampire but safely, in a good way, not a monstrous way.

So she knew, now.

She knew the truth. How he felt about her, about the two of them.

He hadn’t asked to feel this way. To yearn for them. And he would never burden them by acting on it. But he’d hoped to keep the knowledge from them as well…

Lucy seemed determined to talk to him about it but Flynn really couldn’t handle hearing her soft, well thought out rejection. So he was just trying to make it clear he understood, that he wasn’t going to push for anything, and stayed out of her way.

Soon this would all be over. Denise was finishing things on her end and Lucy was cooking something up with Jiya. They would defeat Rittenhouse and go home. Well, the others would go home. Lucy would get Amy back and Wyatt would go into W Force again and Flynn would—

He’d been thinking about his homeland a lot, actually. About Croatia. He missed the ocean there. Maybe he’d go back. Find somewhere secluded, one of the national parks, perhaps. And he’d walk, and walk, and walk, until he laid down. And then he just… wouldn’t get back up again.

* * *

Rufus tried not to listen in as Lucy finished talking up with Jiya again. It had started out as a strategy session, and Jiya assuring Lucy that last she had seen, Amy was fine—apparently pissed as fuck and the biggest brat possible, but fine—but it had now evolved into something more personal.

“It’s not that simple,” Lucy was saying, her voice hushed. “Not because of the—the, you know, but because he’s so stubborn and he hates himself so much, I can sense it every time I use my magic on him—”

Jiya said something that made Lucy snort. “I could sit on his lap naked and I doubt he’d get the message.”

Rufus cleared his throat loudly.

Lucy just flipped him off. She was terribly embarrassed about the idea of Flynn or Wyatt overhearing her while she spilled her woes about not being able to rope them into a messy polyamorous triangle (and oh, how Rufus regretted the fact that he knew this) so she would have her talks with Jiya in Rufus's room—but God forbid she ever get embarrassed enough to care what _Rufus _might overhear. What was he, chopped liver?

When Lucy at last finished up, she tossed the phone to Rufus, who finally got to chat with his own damn girlfriend, and then ended the call.

“Lucy,” Rufus said, “given that Wyatt just tried to eat a chocolate bar again and threw up and Flynn loaded up on squirrel blood so he can eat the garlic rolls he made without going into anaphylactic shock or whatever the vampire version is, have you ever… I don’t know… questioned your romantic judgment?”

“Daily,” Lucy replied. She looked over at him. “You know, you two are really good for each other. It’s… it’s so clear that you two were good friends, first. I’m sorry you’ve been stuck here with us.”

Rufus shrugged. “You guys have your weird charms.”

Lucy’s mouth quirked upwards, a little sadly. “You know sometimes I think you and Jiya might be the first real friends I’ve ever had.”

“I guess you’ll just have to still hang out with us after we get out of this mess,” Rufus replied. “See if you can wrangle those two idiots into joining. I have way too many science fiction movies to convince Flynn to watch. Did you know his favorite films are period films? His favorite movie is _Pride & Prejudice _and when he was a kid he wanted to be a medieval knight…” Rufus let his voice trail off. “You have that ridiculous smile on your face again.”

“No, no, please continue.” Lucy settled back against the pillows on Rufus’s bed. “I want to hear more about adorable kid Flynn and how you managed to get this vital information out of him.”

“How about you just ask him yourself after you finally bang him?”

“Low blow, Carlin, low blow.”

* * *

Lucy had tried literally everything.

Well, everything short of lying naked on Flynn’s bed but there was a difference between making it clear that she’d like Flynn to use his mouth for things other than sassing someone and setting herself up for embarrassment.

Normally she would never be so bold, talk herself out of it, tell herself she was imagining it. Jiya had been helping a lot with the encouragement and the self-esteem. “If you can’t do it now, Lucy, under these circumstances, when the fuck are you?” she’d demanded at one point.

But still, she’d been hesitant, until her impatience had begun to win out over her fear and she’d put herself out there. For the first time in years, she had tried to, well, to flirt.

She’d seen Flynn’s memory of her, the one that she had—inadvertently—used to bring him out of the blood rage along with his memory of Wyatt. She knew how he felt, and so surely he couldn’t misunderstand and fail to pick up the signals she was laying down, right?

Wrong.

Even Wyatt, the one she’d thought would be damn _easy_, was instead avoiding her by literally shifting into a wolf and running into the woods to either chase a rabbit around or dig a hole.

What the hell. She was officially less appealing than digging a hole in the ground.

There had been far too many late nights, far too many moments, that she couldn’t brush them all off. And she would maintain until the day she died that Flynn had thought about kissing her during their last argument.

She’d been thinking about kissing him.

Today, however… today, she and Flynn were alone in the bunker. Rufus was off doing a supply run with Wyatt, who had been able to rope Rufus into one of his ‘I am a werewolf and I must give into my wanderlust and prowl all over suburbia’ walks.

Lucy suspected that a part of why he went on these walks was the amount of petting and treats he got from people wondering how such a sweet cute doggy could be wandering all by his lonesome. The shameless attention seeker.

Although, come to think of it, Wyatt had lit out of the bunker pretty damn quickly and he hadn’t really looked her in the eye while he’d done it.

Hmm.

No matter. Today she was getting Flynn and they were hashing this out. Even if she had to trap him in a damn circle of garlic to keep him still.

As the sun went down and she finished renewing the protection spells to keep Rittenhouse from finding them, she felt a telltale clench in her stomach.

Oh, great. Just great.

She rummaged around in the cupboards for the tea ingredients. One of the few useful things Mom had taught her was a tea to get rid of those damn cramps, but she’d worn her nice underwear that day, dammit, and if it was ruined…

“Lucy?” Ah, Count Useless was awake. “Everything all right?”

He sounded legitimately worried. “I’m fine, why…”

She turned around to find Flynn had already hurried down the hallway into the main room, still wearing the pajamas he slept in. An immortal being of destruction wearing flannel pajama pants and a t-shirt to bed never stopped amusing her. But the look on Flynn’s face was anything but. He was staring at her like he expected her to have a gunshot wound.

“What’s wrong?” Shit, had he sensed something?

“I got a text from Wyatt, I guess he knew I’d see it when I woke up, said to stay away from you for the next couple days and he was doing the same.”

Stay away from her? What the hell? “Wyatt doesn’t get to decide who I can and can’t see.”

“But I woke up and smelled blood.” Flynn sounded horribly confused, but underneath that was another note, something raw and rough that made Lucy’s skin feel hot. “I thought—you were injured and you know we can’t—we can’t be near you for too long, that’s why we have… Rufus…”

Flynn was drawing closer to her, almost as if something was pulling him against his will. His dark eyes were starting to hold a trace of that vampire black along the edges, bleeding in. Lucy wasn’t sure when her initial fear and distrust of that had turned into a hot thrill in the pit of her stomach but she’d long since abandoned arguing with herself about it. “But you’re not injured.”

“No, I’m fine, we’re all fine. Except Wyatt has apparently decided to play his lost puppy routine on the neighborhood for the next couple days and didn’t tell me.”

“You’re not fine,” Flynn replied, and that rough edge was stronger in his voice now. “You’re bleeding, I can tell, you need…”

Oh.

Lucy could feel her face flushing and that seemed to be what clued Flynn in. He stared at her, getting pale, eyes going wide. Lucy was pretty sure if she looked up ‘gobsmacked’ in the dictionary she’d find a picture of Flynn with that exact expression on his face.

“Yes,” she managed to get out. Her throat was rather dry. “So it’s all fine, really. I’m fine. So. Anyway. You can just…” God, she wanted to sink into the floor. This was the opposite of how she’d hoped this evening would go. “…hang out in your room or something, if it bothers you.”

“Bothers,” Flynn repeated, like he didn’t know what the word meant.

“Yes, bothers,” Lucy snapped. She felt vulnerable and exposed and not in a fun, sexy way. She turned away from him and started laying out her ingredients, tilting her head back to look up into the cupboard.

Behind her Flynn made a kind of strangled noise and she remembered—no exposing her neck, no presenting it, that ‘did things’ to vampires.

Fuck her life.

Lucy turned around again, glaring at him. “If you give me the whole ‘get out of the bunker before I eat you’ routine, Flynn, it’s not working. I know you’re not going to hurt me so you can take that—that—attitude back to your coffin.”

“I don’t have a coffin,” Flynn replied automatically. “I have a very nice four poster bed.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

Flynn made a pained expression, then closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, that’s not—I meant—”

“Apparently two of my three roommates can literally smell when I’m on my period,” Lucy snapped. “I think I’m embarrassed enough for the day, so if you’re incapable of acting like it’s a normal day for you, I’d appreciate you letting me get on with mine.”

“You’re embarrassed,” Flynn said slowly, like once again he couldn’t understand the word. Even though he spoke perfect English on top of his, what, ten other languages? Damn him.

“Yes, Flynn, wonderful observation, very astute. Did the red face not give it away?” Lucy gestured at her cheeks, the ones that were still very warm and she was sure quite flushed, and made to turn away.

She’d planned on making a nice dinner and flirting and maybe sitting in his lap if that was what it took. Not realizing that one roommate had literally gone on a wolf sabbatical to keep away from her while the other was trying not to turn her into his next meal.

Not that she would have minded if Flynn… sampled, a little. She’d thought about that, a few times, in the shower. If on top of all the usual things he bit her—just a little, just enough. She could still recall the feeling of his mouth on her neck if she tried hard enough, the rush of ecstasy in her veins, the way she’d come so very close to falling off the edge the way that Wyatt had.

Before she could finish turning away, though, Flynn gently took her wrist and used it to turn her back to face him.

Jesus, he looked wrecked. Like he hadn’t slept for days. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I should go. I’ll stay somewhere else for a few days.”

“You can’t. Rittenhouse will find you.”

“If they can’t find Wyatt loping around as a werewolf looking for people to feed him ice cream then they can’t find me. He had the right idea to stay away. Just text me when it’s over. Or Rufus can text me. Doesn’t matter.” Flynn let go of her and stepped away, even though, from the expression on his face, it gave him physical pain to put distance between them.

“I don’t care if you can tell, Flynn, I mean, God knows you’d probably be able to tell by the tea and all the whining about it I’d be doing. It doesn’t… it doesn’t really embarrass me that you know, all right? It embarrasses me that you and Wyatt think you have to stay away from me. Because you’ll—I don’t even know.”

Flynn literally gaped at her for a moment. “Lucy, we have to stay away from you.”

“Why? Because you’ll drain me? Because Wyatt will, I don’t even know, tear me limb from limb?”

“No.” Flynn’s voice started to hold that vampire snarl, the deep reverberating one that did a number on her ability to think clearly or stand upright. “Because you’re—Lucy—do you really not understand?”

“For the hundredth time—I’m a witch but that still makes me human. I don’t automatically know the things you and Wyatt know, I’m not a supernatural creature.”

Flynn rubbed a hand across his eyes and glanced upward as if praying for patience. When he looked into her eyes again, she could see the red bleeding in and out, like he was actively fighting off his baser instincts. “Wyatt can’t be around you because you’re… because you smell… I can’t describe it perfectly because I’m not a werewolf, it’s different for me than it is for him, but I’d guess because you smelled like mate. Like missed opportunity. You smelled _irresistible_, Lucy, and he knew he had to get out of here before he did something stupid.”

She almost glanced out the window to see if pigs were flying. “Are you telling me Wyatt left because he wanted to have sex with me?”

Flynn grumbled something that sounded like _always wants_ but then he spoke up and answered, in a strained voice, “Essentially.”

Lucy took in Flynn’s form. The way his hands were clenched at his sides, the tautness of his body, like he was straining against ropes that held him back. His eyes, the black pulsing in and out, the way he was starting to talk carefully, like he was avoiding showing his fangs…

She took a step closer, testing, and Flynn flinched. She could see, now that she was looking for it, how he was breathing heavily. How his jaw was clenched.

“And what do I smell like to you?” she asked softly. A month ago, a week ago, she wouldn’t have been confident enough, bold enough, to even ask. But she was starting to suspect that she’d misread why Flynn was holding himself back from her, that it wasn’t because she wasn’t good enough, that it wasn’t because he was still too wrapped up in grief for his family, that it wasn’t any of the self-deprecating things she’d told herself time and again. That it had far more to do with _him_ and his own fears about himself than it had anything to do with her.

Flynn closed his eyes again, inhaling sharply. “Lucy, please.”

She reached up, cupping his face, not at all minding the lack of warmth, the cold of his skin. Flynn made a tiny, wounded noise in the back of his throat, his face turning into her hand, his lips brushing against her palm.

“What do I smell like, Flynn?” she repeated.

Flynn’s eyes opened and met hers. There was no red in them, none at all. They were black as night. “Like heaven.”

A shiver wracked through her and she slid her hand down, taking a good fistful of his shirt, getting up on her tiptoes as she tugged him down to her.

Flynn made another noise as he kissed her, like pain and relief combined, his mouth pressing against hers with bruising force. Something inside her sang _yes_ and she yanked at his shoulders, pressed herself against him. She couldn’t have him stop, not now that she’d finally gotten them here.

He pulled back just a bit and she thought she’d have to take his face in her hands and make him be still, but Flynn just began to press kisses all over her face, whispering her name, like something inside of him had broken. She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeaked in surprise as Flynn got his arm around her waist, hauling her up, lifting her off the ground. Lucy clung to him, holding him as much as he was holding her. And she tilted her head back, exposing her neck.

Flynn made a sound like she’d stabbed him and wrenched his head away, gazing at her. “Lucy…”

“I trust you,” she promised him. She ran a hand through his soft dark hair, still rumpled from sleep.

Flynn’s gaze drifted down her neck and then back up again to meet her eyes. “I can hear it,” he whispered, his voice wrecked. “I can hear you, it’s like music, you have no idea…”

“Then show me,” she demanded. “Take me to bed and show me.”

For a moment she thought that he wouldn’t, that he’d drop her and back away and they’d have to do this all over again. But then Flynn’s arms tightened around her and he kissed her again, and she felt him beginning to walk out of the kitchen and back down the hallway.

Damn, the man might have lost his mortality, but he hadn’t lost his ability to kiss. Lucy almost laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the thought and felt Flynn smile briefly against her mouth right before he kissed her again. Normally Lucy would have objected to someone carrying her down a hallway that was all concrete while his eyes were closed, but Flynn had done much more perilous things and been fine, and she could feel the supernatural strength in his arms as he held her up. More than that, she trusted him. He wasn’t going to drop her.

Flynn’s room, what she saw of it as he dropped her onto the bed, was as lacking in decoration as it had been when they’d first moved in here. Lucy had done her best to make her own room look cozy, and Wyatt had promptly turned his bed into a proper mess by piling blankets and pillows and stuffed animals on it, but Flynn’s room was still barren.

Looked like she’d have to warm it up. Or just ask him to sleep in her room from now on. After all, she didn’t intend for this to be a one-time thing.

She tugged Flynn on top of her onto the bed, kissing him again as soon as she could reach him. Flynn’s hands were everywhere, sliding underneath her shirt, soaking up her warmth, undoing her jeans and shoving them down.

“What…” she managed to gasp out, but then Flynn was sliding his hand up her thigh and his mouth down her throat and she decided higher brain functions could just check out for a while.

She helped Flynn get her shirt off, and then he was kissing down her body like he was going to starve if he stopped. Maybe he would, literally, maybe this was some vampire thing like how he let Wyatt nap on him so he could soak up Wyatt’s warmth, but she didn’t care, not when he was sucking slowly at the skin, darting his tongue out to lick, his too-sharp teeth just barely pricking her now and again, making her shiver.

He got his hands on both thighs and spread them apart, ducking his head down to draw his mouth slowly up the soft skin. Lucy’s hips bucked and she had to bite down hard on her lip. It had been, well, a while since she’d been with anyone and Flynn was happily nosing along her skin like he had another hundred years to do this.

Well, maybe he did, but she didn’t.

“Flynn.” She wove a hand through his hair, tugging a little. Flynn just hummed against her skin like a gigantic cat with cream. She tugged a little harder. “Garcia.”

That got him moving, and moving a little faster than any human could, his mouth sealing over her through her underwear and sucking. Lucy’s hips bucked up and sparks seemed to come alive inside of her, her hold tightening on Flynn’s hair and a rather undignified noise escaping her.

Flynn chuckled against her skin, and she was going to glare at him for it, but then he was—

“That was my favorite pair of underwear, Flynn.”

Flynn looked, uncaring, at the now-ripped underwear in his hand. Lucy glared at him. “And don’t pretend you’re sorry.”

He shrugged, tossing it aside. “I’ll get you another pair.”

“You will—_fuck_.” Lucy ended the sentence in a completely different way than she’d intended as Flynn finally got his mouth on her, his tongue sliding through her folds like he’d been studying and planning exactly how he wanted to do this to her.

Knowing how methodical and thorough Flynn could be, he probably had.

It felt like her blood was made of champagne, fizzing and bubbling, and she couldn’t seem to decide if she should push into it or pull away from the overwhelming, relentless touch of him. Flynn’s hands were holding her legs down and apart, giving him space, but she knew if she so much as suggested she was in pain he’d let her go.

Flynn’s tongue, his mouth, his fingers were everywhere, against her, inside her, and it suddenly hit Lucy that this was something for him, too, that he could taste her, was feeding off her, and she felt so dizzy if she’d been standing up she’d have fallen over. She could feel a hint of teeth again and she arched up, inhaling sharply. It felt like she was breathing fire. She almost wanted to laugh. Big bad vampire Flynn, the one she’d been sent to capture, to bring in, the one everybody had been so scared of—scared to hurt her, getting on his knees for her. The one everyone said would feed on her if he had half a chance was, indeed, making good on that fear and in the least expected way possible, and doing the best damn job of it.

He seemed determined to tease her, too, skirting around her clit, moving away once she started to get close. Lucy tugged on his hair again. “Garcia, _please_.”

She wasn’t sure what she was asking for—for him to pull away, to get up there and fuck her, or if she wanted him to just end it all right there and then, make her scream with his mouth while he—fuck while he _fed_ off her—

Lucy didn’t know what it said about her that it was turning her on so much and she wasn’t about to examine that, thanks, she had enough issues to bring to a therapist already.

But whatever she was thinking she wanted, it didn’t matter, because Flynn sealed his mouth over her clit and sucked and it was like everything in her rushed out of her, roaring in her ears, like a wave comprised of lightning and sound.

Flynn was crawling up to her while she was still trying to remember how to breathe, spots dancing in her vision. “Lucy. Lucy, are you—”

“You’re asking me if I’m okay?”

Flynn looked concerned, still. “I have to make sure.”

Lucy hooked her leg around him, giving an unhappy growl when she saw that he still had his clothes on. “I’m fantastic, now fuck me.”

Flynn looked a little like she’d told him to jump in front of a freight train, and then he was making that desperate noise again and kissing her. She could taste—she could taste herself but she could also taste blood, thick and tangy and like iron—and a shudder worked through her.

Flynn started to pull away, as if he had just realized that fact. Lucy wouldn’t let him go, clawing at him to keep him in place, sealing her mouth over his again. She liked it, she wasn’t scared of it, wasn’t scared of him. Flynn sank into her, almost with relief, one hand running through her hair, then moving down to cup her cheek, his thumb swiping along her skin, reverent.

“You want this,” he whispered, his mouth brushing against hers, the words pushed into her mouth.

She wanted to roll her eyes because really, how obvious could she be, they were literally in the middle of this, but she could also understand.

“Yes,” she promised him. Flynn wouldn’t, wasn’t, giving anything she didn’t want to take.

Now that was dealt with, Lucy got her hands under his shirt and pulled it up, until Flynn had to pull back to get it up over his head. She kicked at his pants, too, until they were off, glad he’d been lazy and was still in pajamas so she didn’t have to deal with things like buttons and zippers. Flynn kissed her stomach, her breast, her neck, and seemed quite content to keep up this pattern until Lucy decided enough was enough and got her hand around his cock, stroking slowly, teasingly.

Flynn nipped at her skin in retaliation, and Lucy hadn’t been thinking about that, hadn’t wanted to have sex with him just for some kind of kink, but she couldn’t stop the noise she made either when she felt the tip of those teeth just shy of breaking her skin.

There was a pause. Then Flynn looked up at her, a familiar _gotcha_ smirk on his face.

“Well, well, Lucy Preston.”

Lucy glared at him. “Fuck me,” she ordered, because she was not having this discussion now, thanks.

Flynn’s eyes were black and shining and yet, somehow, very human, and very soft, as he dipped his head down to kiss her throat. “If you say so,” he rumbled. His hand slid underneath her thigh, his mouth sucking almost absently at her skin, and then finally he was inching inside of her.

He was clearly still scared of hurting her, entering her slowly, but she could feel every muscle in him coiled tight like a spring and she didn’t want him to hold back. She grabbed at him, hauling him to her as she arched up, and then he was sliding inside of her completely and pushing the air out of her chest all at the same moment.

Flynn groaned and she could feel it moving through all of him. She wanted him to move, she wanted him to kiss her, she wanted him to bite her, she wanted everything. But for a moment there was just breathing, just Flynn holding her, and then when he looked up at her—

Her breath caught. He was looking at her like—like, she couldn’t even explain it, but the word popped into her head all of a sudden, _worshipful_.

Before she could examine that thought, before it could scare her with its magnitude, Flynn was kissing her. And here, here was what she’d been looking for, because his tongue slid into her mouth like he knew it belonged there and his hips started to rock into her with a purpose, like he was warming her up. She rolled her hips back into him, chasing that rhythm, and fuck he was starting to give it to her.

Lucy tore her mouth away from his, unable to keep kissing, needing to breathe, but Flynn wasn’t human and didn’t have that problem anymore. He breathed out of habit, she saw it, but he didn’t need it. Now he was using that to his advantage, moving slowly down her body until he lips were right at her pulse.

“Do it,” she whispered. She got her hand around the back of his neck to hold his head in place, to keep him from jerking away out of fear for her. “You can, I want—I want you to.”

Flynn’s entire body shuddered and jerked in response to her words, and then…

It was pain, she couldn’t deny that. But it was also pleasure, and the pain was just enough of an edge to make it all that much more real, that much more sensitive. And then he was sucking, and his tongue was lapping at her, and he was moving inside of her in the same rhythm and oh God, so this was why people had a whole thing about it.

Lucy ran her hands through his hair, over his back, clutching at him, moving with him. She didn’t want him to think for one second that she wasn’t loving this because she was, it was buzzing and floating all at once, she felt almost drunk and she never, ever wanted to come down. Except that she would, she had to, because she was getting pushed closer and closer to the edge once again.

“Garcia.” She so rarely said his first name but it felt right, it felt like what he wanted. Flynn groaned against her skin, sucking a little harder, and it was like she’d been jerked on a string. His hand moved between them, his thumb pressing against her clit and fuck she was still sensitive there from before and his hips were still moving up and _in_ and _in—_

A strangled moan left her as she shuddered apart, Flynn speeding up his movements, prolonging it, extending it until she thought she was going to scream. She might have screamed—she couldn’t be sure. Her throat was raw inside and out, from her and from him, and then she could feel him pulling away from her, his mouth slick with blood, her blood, and he kissed her and she could taste herself and he was coming inside her and it was all a messy, red-tinged blur.

Flynn pressed his forehead to hers as her heart fluttered, thudding inside her. He could hear it, she knew, hear her pulse. _It’s like music, _he’d said.

She was going to have to bandage her throat. And also brew some of that tea. But if this happened every time…

Well, she wasn’t going to object to frequent sex for five days in a row, that was certain.

She reached up, taking his face into her hands. “Are you all right?”

“I should ask you that.” Flynn pulled back and she could see that his eyes were their usual dark color. “I didn’t hurt you?”

She smiled at him. She was tired, so tired, but far from hurt. “You couldn’t.”

Flynn frowned, as if to say that yes he could, and she shouldn’t take that possibility lightly, but Lucy easily kissed that away. They could deal with all the rest of it later. Right now she just wanted to relish this.

* * *

Lucy napped afterwards. Flynn didn’t.

He just held her, this precious thing that he didn’t deserve. Fuck, of course it was his vampire nature that made him weak enough to give in, of course—

Lucy stirred, turning over in his arms so that he got a mouthful of her dark hair. “I can hear you thinking,” she mumbled sleepily.

Flynn stroked her hair. “My apologies.”

“Do you regret this?” All of a sudden she sounded scared, withdrawn.

“I couldn’t regret you.” That was true. Always. “But…”

“If you say you’re a… a monster or something, Garcia, I swear I will stake you.”

He loved her saying his first name. He was so very gone on her. “We have to leave here eventually, Lucy. Soon. And when we do…”

“You’ll stay with me.” Lucy sounded the way she had when they’d first met, when she’d refused to move no matter how much fear he could see in her eyes, when she’d told him the other week that she would steal the virus cure (if it existed as they thought) from Rittenhouse. Did she realize, he thought, did she realize how brave she was? “You want call yourself a monster, fine, but you’re my monster. You’ll stay with Wyatt and me. Does that sound like a good compromise to you?”

Flynn buried his face in her hair. He could smell her blood, focused in on it, and tried to calm his trembling hands. Lucy pressed her lips to the skin of his throat, where his pulse would be, if he had one.

_Like being held by a marble statue, _Wyatt had grumbled once. If that was how it felt, Lucy didn’t object.

Wyatt…

“Wyatt?” Flynn said out loud.

He couldn’t see Lucy’s face, but he could imagine her expression perfectly, to match her softly amused confession. “It’s not my place, but… I would say—he feels the same way about you that I do.”

“And how do—” Flynn cut himself off. _Don’t you dare ask for that, don’t you dare hope for that, _his mind seemed to snarl.

Lucy tilted her head up, forcing him to scoot back just enough to tip his chin down and look into her eyes. He’d been scared that while being caught up in the release, stuck in the maelstrom of his desire for her, that the blood rage would come back and he’d hurt her. Or worse. But nothing had happened. Lucy… Lucy calmed him, and it had nothing to do with her magic.

“I hate that I’m scared,” Lucy whispered, which was not what he’d expected her to say at all. “I hate that I’m scared of the future, of my mother, of Rittenhouse, of my own magic. I’m scared of—of what I’m capable of, I’m scared of so many things, but Flynn, _Garcia_, I’m not scared of you and I don’t think I ever really have been and I’m—I’m not scared to love you.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth, and it was such a small, tender gesture that he suddenly felt his eyes get wet and hot, and he had to press his cheek against hers, shutting his eyes and just breathing her in.

_I will love you until I turn to ash, _he thought. _Until I forget how old I am. Until some Van Helsing wannabe shoves a stake into my chest._

“I love you,” was all he said out loud.

Lucy wrapped her arms around him and stroked his hair, and that was an answer in and of itself.

* * *

When Wyatt told Rufus he wasn’t coming back after he transformed, “Just gonna run around the woods for a few days,” Rufus didn’t look too happy about it but he also shrugged as if to say _okay, sure, it’s your choice I guess._

He managed to stay away for a day and a half before he caught a scent on the wind. _Flynn._

Wyatt could sense a change in the air, a foreboding, almost, and he took off like a fucking rocket through the trees. Flynn was not happy, Flynn was _not happy_—

Oof. Flynn collided into him and the two of them crashed into a tree. Wyatt tried to tear him off but they rolled again and again until Flynn got on top, pinning him.

“You need to come home,” Flynn said, sounding irritated, and Wyatt hated how his chest warmed at the word _home_. “I’ve been trying to track you all day, what the actual fuck, were you trying to hoof it to the Idaho border!?”

Wyatt wriggled out from underneath Flynn—and tried hard not to think about how that felt—and got to his feet, licking at his paws.

“I’m not having this conversation one-sided,” Flynn snapped. “Shift back.”

Wyatt glared at him. Right, because having this conversation naked was going to be _so _much more fun.

But he shifted back, because Flynn was looking at him in that stern way that made Wyatt feel hot all over and he could feel himself shifting naturally, whether he wanted to or not, drawn to his—to his—to his _damn _anchor.

“What,” he snapped. “I didn’t want—you know. It would’ve been awkward if Lucy… yeah.” He shrugged ineffectually. “I thought it was best I got out of there.” He didn’t want to be that creepy friend who made it awkward.

“Well now it’s best if you come home.” Flynn jerked his head back towards the bunker. “C’mon. Lucy’s waiting.”

He made it sound like… like… Wyatt didn’t dare hope for it.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead, because anyone could see that Flynn was painfully in love with Lucy and had been probably from the first night they’d moved into the bunker.

“Fine,” Flynn replied. And Wyatt could smell—that Flynn was relaxed. Huh. For the first time since Wyatt had met him. And he smelled satisfied. Weird.

It hit him a second later and—oh _fuck_.

“Did you—did you two…” Wyatt gestured at Flynn and then made an ineffectual movement with his fingers.

Flynn looked at him for a moment, seemed to get what Wyatt was getting at, and rolled his eyes. “Werewolf senses,” he muttered. “Yes, Wyatt, Lucy and I, we, well.”

“Congratu-fucking-lations,” Wyatt said. “Good for you.”

“There’s no need to be fucking pissy about it.”

“I’m not being pissy about it!”

“You literally look like you’re sulking.”

“Look, I’m not going back for another day or two, okay?” Wyatt shrugged, folding his arms. “So just. Go on back, all right?”

“Lucy’s worried about you, she misses you,” Flynn replied. “She can’t sleep without you. And you shouldn’t be out here all alone with Rittenhouse—they could find us—”

“It’s been a month and a half, Flynn, if they were able to find us they would’ve by now.” Wyatt couldn’t quite say why he was being this way. He hated this part of himself, the part that had done the same to Jess—pushing and prodding like he was literally trying to drive away the people he loved.

Flynn and Lucy didn’t want him the way that he wanted them. The squirming ache in his gut when he looked at Flynn—and the guilt that came with it—now that guilt was doubled, because Flynn was Lucy’s, not Wyatt’s, and he wanted someone who was with someone else and a _man _on top of that and he was so starving for touch and for an anchor—

Flynn snorted. “Fine. Will it help if I chased you back? Will that get some of this crankiness out of you?”

“I’m not—”

Flynn pulled something out of his jeans pocket, and it took Wyatt a moment to realize that it was a very small vacuum-packed bag. Flynn opened it and threw a pair of briefs, a pair of jeans, and a shirt at Wyatt’s head. Wyatt caught them, just barely, on instinct.

Flynn shoved the now-empty bag back into his pocket. “Put on some damn clothes and we’ll see how fast you are when you’ve just got two legs.”

Wyatt knew he was being played but he also felt like he might burst out of his own skin, wanting Flynn, wanting Lucy, running for a day and a half through the forest like the devil was on his tail, and he hated himself and he yearned and he hated yearning.

So he put the damn clothes on. “Fine.” He shook himself out, got used to the feeling of clothes on his skin again. “Gimme ten seconds.”

“Only fair,” Flynn said, giving him a sharp grin that exposed his fangs.

Wyatt shivered.

“Ten…” Flynn said. “Nine…”

Wyatt took off running.

He hadn’t run while in human form since he was doing drills in W Force, usually just shifting to wolf form instead since it was easier. But the whole thing was that they couldn’t just shift into wolf form and lose their damn equipment whenever they wanted, so they practiced running in human form instead.

It felt good. Better than he’d remembered.

He could hear Flynn behind him, catching up faster than Wyatt had planned, and he tried to dodge and weave through the trees, to keep a bit of a lead—

He ducked, and Flynn went sailing over his head, but he realized only too late that was Flynn’s plan as the vampire landed in front of him, pivoting, fangs bared, eyes black, ready to pounce.

Wyatt let some of his wolf shine through as he growled back at him, and they leapt at each other, so much rage roiling inside of Wyatt that he didn’t even feel gravity anymore.

They tangled, crashed, snapping, and it was the fiercest they’d gotten since they’d been enemies way back in the beginning, in a time that felt like an age, a decade, a lifetime ago. Wyatt snapped his jaw around Flynn’s shoulder and held on for all he was worth, getting shaken and rolled like a rag doll, as Flynn growled in frustration and finally grabbed Wyatt by the hair and _yanked_.

Wyatt’s head snapped back and Flynn’s other hand wrapped around the underside of his jaw, fingers squeezing, and Wyatt gasped for air, stars going off in his blood and an embarrassing noise escaping him. It made his jaw release and Flynn drove Wyatt into the ground, shifting his grip to Wyatt’s throat, thumb pressing down. Wyatt clawed at his shoulders, snarling as best he could, but Flynn had him pinned.

“You can fucking yield, you know,” Flynn grunted, trying to keep Wyatt down.

“_Make _me,” Wyatt managed to choke out, fury clawing at every inch of his insides, fury at himself and at this situation, hating how safe he felt with Flynn and Lucy and not being able to have any of it, and he surged up to try and roll Flynn off just as Flynn shifted his grip again and they smashed together and Wyatt’s ears rang, his vision dancing with stars.

Flynn slumped for a moment, his forehead pressing against Wyatt’s as it had… was that a week ago? A week and a half? Two weeks? He couldn’t remember.

They panted, practically into each other’s mouths, and then Flynn opened his eyes and they weren’t black anymore but that strange mix that Wyatt could never quite figure out.

Flynn tilted his head down, and Wyatt tilted his back, and he meant to just bare his throat, to yield, but somehow it ended up instead that their mouths brushed together.

Wyatt froze.

Flynn’s gaze searched his. _I know_, he might as well have said, Wyatt could read it in his gaze. _I know, I know the truth, I know what you want—_

He didn’t know which one of them moved, just knew that now they were kissing properly, and he wanted to fucking die.

Wyatt wondered if Flynn kissed Lucy like this. He wanted to see, to witness, but he also just wanted to drown in Flynn’s touch. Flynn was cold, vampire cold, but he was setting Wyatt on fire, Wyatt’s heat clashing with Flynn’s ice until he was melting.

Flynn licked his way into Wyatt’s mouth and Wyatt felt like he might actually die, wanting him close, closer, wanting Flynn to feed off him again, wanting to let go in every way.

Then Flynn pulled back to give Wyatt a moment to breathe and it all came crashing back to him.

Wyatt shoved Flynn off him, succeeding with his element of surprise, and then scrambled to his feet. “We—stop, this isn’t—no.”

“No what!?” Flynn snapped.

“No—this,” Wyatt managed, gesturing between them. “We—no, you’re—I’m—you’re a vampire for fuck’s sake and I’m a werewolf, Jesus, do you have any idea how hard Denise would ream us for this!? How much trouble we’d be in!?”

“Lucy’s a witch, Wyatt, didn’t really stop the two of us.”

“Lucy’s also a woman!” Wyatt blurted out.

Flynn’s eyebrows shot up. “Ah.”

“Christ, I didn’t… I’m not doing this, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I can’t, I—” His breath was coming in hard and choppy and he couldn’t fucking stand it.

He turned and he ran, ran hard as he could, feet pounding into the earth and his blood roaring in his ears, and told himself it was fine that Flynn wasn’t chasing after him.

* * *

He could sense Flynn but he didn’t dare go to him. Flynn wasn’t in his room, which was a surprise—he was in Lucy’s, which probably shouldn’t have hit Wyatt as hard as it did, but.

Rufus was playing _Mass Effect _on his computer in the living room on the couch, headphones firmly in place.

Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table.

Wyatt started to retreat, but Lucy waved her hand and he found that his feet were stuck to the floor.

“It’s not a spell I like to use often but I can’t catch up to you if you choose to run again,” Lucy said quietly. She waved her hand again and Wyatt felt the spell release.

Wyatt swallowed. His throat felt unbearably dry.

Lucy stood up. “We can go to your room,” she said, her voice still quiet. Like she was talking to an animal that would spook, Wyatt realized.

He nodded dumbly, following her. The sound of the door sliding shut behind them felt like a tomb shutting them inside.

Lucy sat down on the bed. “Why did you… why did you do that?” she asked.

That wasn’t the question that Wyatt had expected. He hadn’t expected a question at all, really.

“I—I know I shouldn’t have,” he said, feeling terrified. Feeling small and young. “I know it was disrespectful to—to you. I’m sorry.”

Lucy stared at him. “How was it disrespectful?”

“You know…” Wyatt rubbed at the back of his neck. He wanted to shift and flee and never come back. “You’re together. In love and all that. And I kissed him.”

“You think I’m talking about you kissing him?” Lucy’s hands twitched like she wanted to reach for him. “Wyatt, I… we had talked, already, it was fine, with me, I meant—I meant you saying those things to him, fleeing. You—you hurt him. Flynn doesn’t think much of himself and he—he hates himself, I think, for wanting us. Just a little bit.”

Wyatt had been born a werewolf. He didn’t know what it felt like to be ashamed of what he was. To be something else and then be forced to transform into a new thing. But he did know what it was to hate himself, even if his hatred was reserved for himself as an individual, for failing Jess, their relationship, for failing to find out what anti-werewolf asshole had killed the community’s prize protester, for failing to follow orders, for failing to even shift properly.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said, and then winced. That was what he’d used to say to Jess after he’d been an asshole to her again. “What I mean is—do you know, how my wife died?”

“Jessica?”

Wyatt nodded. “She—we were arguing, right? And I was being a possessive ass, and she got out of the car and said she’d walk home. She—she never made it. They always knew, I always knew, it was someone who hated her work with werewolf rights, y’know, she was big in that, a real figurehead. But we never caught whoever it was. And I know I didn’t kill her but…” He shook his head. “I haven’t been able to shift properly since then. Jess was my anchor, and it was my fault she died, and I—it’s why I was stuck as a wolf, I can’t go back, I don’t _want _to go back, I don’t want to be human. Until…” He spread his hands out. “Flynn.”

“Flynn’s your anchor?”

Wyatt nodded. “I think you are, too, in a way. I feel—with you—but I, I freaked out, Lucy, I freaked out because I’ve never—and fuck, I don’t know who I am or what to do and I freaked out on him and I’ve never wanted a man—never _let _myself, like, yeah you’re a werewolf so be as touchy as you want but God forbid it be _gay_. And I…”

Lucy stood up and took his hands, squeezing. “Wyatt. _Honey_.”

He realized he was crying and sank down onto the bed. “Lucy I don’t know—I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what to do, he makes me feel safe, you make me feel safe and I don’t know—I don’t know what to _do_—”

Lucy pulled him in, holding on tightly. “What would you do as a wolf?” she whispered.

“I… I’d… I’d just… I’d be close to you guys, I guess. I want to sleep with you, and with Flynn, I want to curl up with you guys, I just want to spend time with you, I just want to be _close_. Without having to think about it or be terrified that I’ll mess up or worrying that I’m shit at it.”

“I’m shit at this. Flynn’s shit at this. I don’t know if you noticed but we’re kind of all tripping over ourselves with all the self-loathing we’re flinging around.” Lucy pet his hair, like she did when he was a wolf. “But that’s all we want. To be close. To spent time. And we’ll figure it out, and we’ll be scared together.”

“You know there are laws, right? You’re a witch and I’m a werewolf and Flynn’s a vampire, they’ll never let us…”

“Fuck what they’ll let us do,” Lucy said, pulling back and speaking with such ferocity that Wyatt’s jaw dropped a little. “Denise has managed it for two decades. We’ll manage it. Is this what you want, Wyatt?”

“You’re my anchors,” Wyatt replied dumbly, automatically. “There’s nothing I want more.”

“Then tell him that,” she whispered, and with her hands reaching up to touch his face and her dark eyes softly gazing at him, Wyatt felt like he might just have enough courage to manage it.

* * *

“Well?” Carol Preston asked. She wasn’t a woman who was known for her patience, and her power struggle with Cahill—a ridiculous spat between two ex-lovers who’d had their affair end badly—was making her more frustrated than usual. Carol hadn’t even told Benjamin about their daughter, not for years.

“It took a while. The tracker signal is weak. Took me forever to figure out they’re underground. I think some kind of bunker. But I’ve found them.”

“And you said her idea was ridiculous,” Nicholas noted. Nicholas, so easy to lead around once you fucked him a few times.

“Running around like one of those pretentious PTA wine moms every day is ridiculous,” Carol replied, tension in her shoulders and her voice.

“But it paid off.” Emma Whitmore smiled. “I told you, werewolves have to go outside and be social at some point.”

She’d gotten the tracker on Garcia Flynn when she’d patted him on the arm. Flynn had been completely oblivious to her flirting but Wyatt Logan had noticed—noticed and not been pleased. He’d growled at her like she was going to try and bite Flynn’s hand off. It had been very amusing.

Now they knew where their wayward vampire was, and they could close in.

Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, the Flynn/Lucy smut in this was written as a fun little present for two close friends a full year before the rest of the story. I went in and edited it to fit everything else but my apologies if the tone seems in any way out of place.


	9. Chapter 9

Lucy wanted to shove Wyatt into the same room as Flynn, lock the door, and leave them to sort it all out, but there wasn’t time for that—she had just gotten a call from Jiya.

“We have to move,” Jiya said. “I’m not sure what it is, I was struggling this time, but they’re going to expose Denise. Tomorrow. They’ve found out about her—she’s a werewolf and that her family is blended. They’re going to move against her tomorrow, I’ve seen it, it’s not good and everything falls apart when they do that so if we want to score against Rittenhouse, we have to go now.”

“I’m on it. I’ll—you can see the future, right?”

“Um… yes. I think we’ve established that.”

“Bear with me.” Lucy ran through the bunker, trying to find whatever she could that might be useful. Flynn, Wyatt, and Rufus were all staring at her like she’d grown a second head. “I’m going to go back to my house. My mom has to have some kind of information there. Flynn!”

Flynn started. “Yes?”

“Who were next on your hit list? Cahill and…”

“Keynes, Nicholas Keynes. He’s the son of—”

Lucy remembered the name, _Keynes_, from the picture with her mother in it. “Right. So if they’re not at my house they’ll be at one of those two places, right? Would you say so?”

“I would… yes,” Flynn said, slowly. “Lucy, _draga_, what are you doing?”

She had no idea what ‘draga’ meant but it was obviously a term of endearment and she warmed to it, feeling her cheeks heat up. “I’m going after the virus cure. Jiya says we have to go now. In her last vision, she saw what happens tomorrow—they arrest Denise for her marriage.”

Flynn swore violently as Rufus yelled in protest. Wyatt growled, his jaw elongating and his eyes flashing yellow. Wyatt and Denise didn’t always see eye to eye but they were both werewolves, and she was a real alpha personality. There was a kinship between them because of that.

Lucy also noticed that Flynn and Wyatt were standing apart from each other, as far as they could while still being in the same room. Stupid, stupid boys.

“I have to go now. Jiya’s going to guide me.”

“Uh,” Jiya said over the phone. “You know that everything you do in the present changes what I’ll see in a vision, right?”

“Then you’ll just keep checking in.”

“Go to Mason Industries,” Rufus said. “Get earpieces from the tech department, you and Jiya can stay in better touch that way.”

“I’ll talk to Mason, see if he can stall Rittenhouse at all,” Jiya said. Lucy put her on speaker so that everyone could hear.

“Connor will do it,” Rufus said. “He’s good at chatting people’s ears off, it’s how he gets investors.”

“Can one of you warn Denise?” Lucy asked, stuffing ingredients for spells into a bag. “I’ll get the cure, get Amy, and get out.”

“What if the cure and Amy are in two different locations?” Wyatt asked.

“They aren’t,” Jiya said.

“Mom wouldn’t let Amy be really hurt,” Lucy said, with far more confidence than she felt. She didn’t know that, not really, because a month and a half ago she would’ve said that her mother would never arrange to have her own daughter kidnapped. “It’s going to be fine, I can get both.”

Flynn frowned and glanced at Wyatt, who was frowning in the exact same way. They shared a look that seemed to speak volumes about their agreement on the subject, then both looked angry with themselves for giving in and looking at each other and looked away. “Lucy, are you sure you—how are you—should I come with you?” Wyatt finally finished.

“No, no you guys have to stay—if it’s just me I’ll pass under the radar.”

“I’m not sitting here,” Wyatt started, only for Flynn to take a small step and growl.

Wyatt subsided, and Lucy drew herself up. “I’m not asking permission. I’m the leader of this—this—whatever this is. And I know that might not mean much, but it means—it means something, all right? I’m not risking either of you by letting you go out with me. I’m a witch and I’m a good one, I’m a—a damn good one.”

“You are,” Flynn assured her. “You’re one of the best.”

For the first time, it didn’t feel like a burden. She could destroy people with their own memories if she had to, and she would, she _would_, if it meant that she kept those she loved safe. Maybe another time it would scare her, but right now, she was too full of adrenaline. Right now, she was in the throes of war.

“Let me do what I’m good at,” she said, looking at each of them in turn.

Rufus swallowed. “If you really think… whatever you need, Lucy. We’ll do it. I trust you and I trust Jiya.”

“Thanks, babe,” Jiya said over the phone.

Rufus flushed.

Wyatt swallowed, looked away, then looked back and tilted his head back, baring his throat. The sign of submission in werewolves.

Lucy looked at Flynn, who looked like he was being torn in half. “Can you trust me?” she whispered.

Flynn gave her that half bow, half nod, and Lucy slowly released her breath. All right. “I won’t be alone,” she promised. “I’ll have Jiya with me.”

The corner of Flynn’s mouth quirked up and Wyatt rolled his eyes in an amused way. Lucy grabbed her bag. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Call us if something goes wrong,” Wyatt blurted out, unable to stop himself.

“Nothing will go wrong,” Lucy replied.

Or so she hoped.

* * *

Wyatt watched Flynn as he paced around the room, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of letting Lucy go out on her own and feeling helpless. Wyatt understood—he felt the same way. But Lucy had a strong point in that it would be easier for her to get into her own house without a wanted vampire or a werewolf with her, Rufus would just be a liability, and she was a powerful witch. She could handle herself. Stealth and pitting magic against magic were the best ways to go about this.

Didn’t stop him from worrying about her, and didn’t stop Flynn, either.

Wyatt wanted to offer to go on a run with him, but they should probably stay in the bunker, and Flynn didn’t want to spend any time with Wyatt now, obviously, after Wyatt’s shitty behavior.

He needed to tell Flynn the truth. He needed to let him know. Lucy had said—she’d said—he had to trust Lucy, he had to.

Wyatt cleared his throat. “Flynn?”

He stopped, the words he was going to say frozen in his throat, as the phone rang.

Fuck.

Rufus went to get it, but Flynn shot across the room like he’d been blasted out of a cannon, grabbing it. “Flynn,” he grit out.

Wyatt could hear Mason over the phone like he was standing next to him. “They’re coming,” he said. “Get out, they tracked you—they used my own bloody tech—get out of the bunker, get out now!”

Flynn tossed the phone to Rufus and bolted for the front door. Wyatt dashed after him, his heart pounding, the wolf inside of him snarling. “What do we do!?

“Someone named Emma,” Rufus yelled after them. “Fuck, wait, Emma?” he then added, talking to Mason again. “Are you shitting me!? Emma Whitmore!” he yelled at them again. “She works for Mason, she’s one of—we thought she was one of us, she must’ve been a Rittenhouse mole.”

“Whitmore,” Flynn snarled, his eyes going black. “Joanna Whitmore was one of the names on that photograph, we should’ve checked up, it was the only name I didn’t recognize—”

“Time for self-loathing later,” Wyatt told him. “What do we do?”

Flynn glanced back down the hallway. “They’ll pull a noose. They’ll know you and I can lose them in the woods so they won’t want to let us. Get Rufus out. He’s the scientist and he’s the human, he won’t stand a chance. We need his data on me. If something—if anything—the world needs to know what Rittenhouse tried to do to vampires.”

“What about you?”

Flynn glanced at him a bit coldly. “What does it matter to you?”

“Everything, dipshit,” Wyatt shot back.

“Just get Rufus out,” Flynn grit out.

“What about your—the blood rage—”

“Just, trust me, all right, Wyatt?” Flynn snapped.

Wyatt swallowed. Yeah, he trusted Flynn all right. He trusted Flynn to take this suicide mission as a goddamn opportunity. “I’m coming back for you,” he warned.

Flynn ignored him.

Wyatt rushed into Rufus’s room and started gathering all of Rufus’s data. “Rufus, yo, buddy, pal, get your ass in gear! We’re going!”

“Be careful with those vials!” Rufus yelled, snatching them from Wyatt and sorting them.

“We don’t have _time_,” Wyatt snapped. The sooner they could get out of here and he got Rufus somewhere safe the sooner he could come back to stop Flynn from fucking dying.

“How are we going to do this?” Rufus asked as he packed. “I can’t keep up with your running and you’re pretty big as a wolf but not big enough for me to, like, ride or anything.”

Wyatt swallowed, then cleared his throat. “Uh. So. You know all those… old stories about werewolves looking… really scary and freaky?”

“You mean like those old movies where they look like huge men with these freaky twisted muscles that look like they’ve got no skin and they’re covered in hair and stand on two legs and have massive claws and their faces are terrifying and they’re like literal wolf-men?” Rufus asked.

“…yeah…” Wyatt shuffled his feet. “So, if, um, so that is what happens if you, um, transform wrong. Or if you stop your transformation halfway through.”

Rufus stared at him. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like why you’re telling me this.”

“…because you’re not going to like me telling you this,” Wyatt said.

Rufus literally dropped everything onto the bed, looked down at his hands, and said softly, in a broken voice, “why me?”

Wyatt gestured wildly at the stuff on the bed. “Let’s go! It’s the only way I can carry you while running, I grow like an extra fifty pounds of muscle and half a foot when I’m in that form!”

“I hate you,” Rufus said venomously. “I hope you know that I hate you so much right now. I’m boiling in hatred.”

Wyatt just grabbed the bag. “Let’s _go_, you scaredy-cat.”

* * *

Flynn knew that there was no way Rufus and Wyatt would get out in time.

If Rittenhouse was leading an attack on the bunker then it was already too late. But a random werewolf and a human scientist would be a lower priority than the vampire who had nearly destroyed their organization and carried their precious virus in his veins.

The only chance they had was to draw the Rittenhouse forces to him. Flynn was certain that the team would be prepared, with silver if not with stakes, but he was also certain that he could take them.

He wasn’t as ready to embrace oblivion as he had been yesterday. Lucy loved him. Lucy _loved _him. Even if Wyatt wasn’t willing to give them a chance, even if Wyatt was in denial, Lucy wasn’t and Lucy loved him and he didn’t want to leave her, didn’t want to hurt her like that. But if this was the only way…

What chance did he really stand, anyhow, with the blood rage inside of him? He wouldn’t chain them together, with him dependent on her to keep the virus from taking over. There was the possibility of Lucy and Rufus being right, of there being a cure, but… dare he hope for that?

No matter. He’d do whatever he had to, to protect Rufus and Wyatt, and make sure that word about Rittenhouse got out. To keep their forces on him so that they wouldn’t think to check back on wherever Amy was, wherever Lucy was. Lucy had to get her sister back.

Flynn strode up into the woods. “You think to baffle me?” he yelled. He could feel a savage grin stretching over his face. He could smell them, after all, and one smell he recognized—he’d sensed her blood before. He wasn’t sure where from, but somewhere. “With your pale faces all in a row like sheep? My revenge has just begun! I will spread it over centuries and time is on my side!”

He could smell the magic in the air right before a blast of fire was sent hurtling right towards his face. Flynn dodged, wincing as the hot air shot past him, only inches from catching on his coat.

“Really?” someone yelled, a woman. “You’re quoting _Dracula_?”

“I figured memorizing a few passages was going to come in handy someday,” Flynn replied. “Just in case the moment called for it.”

A woman strode into view, redheaded, and Flynn recognized her at once—the jogger from the other day. Only now instead of soft and friendly she was imperial and ferocious.

“Emma Whitmore, I presume?” Flynn asked.

Emma just scowled. “You know shit like this is why everyone hates vampires, right!?”

“Would you prefer…” Flynn thought for a moment. “You are an unrighteous, bastardly gullion. Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell. When you die, I will face God and walk backwards into Hell just so that I can beat your ass in the afterlife, too.”

Emma snarled at him. “Oh, shut the _fuck _up already!”

She sent another blast of fire at him, and Flynn felt that itch inside of him, red bleeding into his vision, the thirst rising in his throat. Everything in him screamed to let go, to tear, to rend limb from limb, to _feed_.

_Blood, blood, blood, drink, drink, drink, kill, kill, kill—_

For the first time since he’d moved into the bunker, he gave into it.

He let himself rage.

* * *

Jiya jabbered in her ear as Lucy scoured through her mom’s bedroom and office in her house. “There’s nothing here!” Lucy hissed. “Have you found the Keynes house yet?”

She was guessing that the cure, and Amy, would be with Nicholas Keynes since the Cahill house had been compromised by Flynn’s attempted attack. Jiya was using her time magic to try and find the exact address while Mason looked for it using an old-fashioned computer search.

“Mason thinks it’s got it,” Jiya said. “Texting it to you now.”

“Have we changed the future yet?” Lucy asked, trying to ignore how her heart was in her throat as she slammed another desk drawer shut and opened another one.

She could tell by Jiya’s silence what the answer was even before Jiya said, hesitantly, “…not yet.”

Lucy grit her teeth. Her phone lit up with the text from Jiya. “I’m headed for the Keynes residence.”

“Be careful,” Jiya warned.

Lucy slammed another drawer shut. “Trust me,” she promised. “Whether my mom knows it or not, this is what she’s trained me my whole life to do.”

The Keynes residence was in one of those annoyingly rich neighborhoods where all the houses were those carefully restored and maintained old-fashioned houses, the kind that were gorgeous to look at but were annoying because you knew that the people inside were stupidly wealthy and from old money.

Lucy walked up the street, trying to look normal and not like she was wiggling her fingers, trying to feel out the protective spells that covered the house. Flynn, a vampire with no magical abilities, had managed to get past the defensive spells on all the Rittenhouse residences he’d gone after. Surely she could do the same.

“I can see you,” Jiya said. “You’re going to try and get in through the upper story because there are fewer spells up there. Don’t. You’ll be caught. Go through the cellar doors instead on the right.”

Lucy did as she was told, landing in an old dusty room that looked like it had once been the kind of place that was used for storing preservatives and the like. “Now what?”

“Amy’s in an upper room, small one, with green painted walls. I think it’s towards the back of the house, whenever I see her in a vision I can see through the window that there’s a tree and there’s only room for a tree—”

“There’s a tree in the backyard, yeah,” Lucy confirmed. “Is it on the right or left side of the window when you see her in your visions?”

“The left.”

Then Amy was on the right-hand side of the house, second floor. Lucy crept up towards the door that led up to the main floor of the house and pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear anything. “Any idea where the cure would be?”

“Hide!” Jiya hissed.

Lucy scrambled.

“Not behind the shelf!” Jiya corrected her as Lucy headed for it. “Under the stairs!”

“There are spiders and things under there!”

“Better a spider in your hair than you caught!”

Lucy wiggled in next to some boxes underneath the stairs right as the door opened.

“Someone tripped the alarm,” a man said. “Honestly, Carol, it was probably a rat or something. You’re being paranoid.”

“I trained her,” Carol Preston replied, and Lucy’s heart felt like it was shoved up into her throat, choking her. “She’s more powerful than she knows and if she gets in here and sees what we’ve done to Amy—”

Fear seized her. What had they done to her sister!?

“She’ll be fine,” the man replied, sounding droll and so annoyingly arrogant that Lucy wanted to leap up and strangle him. “She just needed to be made a little more… docile.”

“Mason’s working on a distraction,” Jiya whispered. Almost as soon as she’d finished speaking, a phone rang upstairs.

“That might be Emma,” the man said.

“She can’t possibly have gotten Flynn already.”

“She’s good at what she does, Carol.”

“Oh, stop thinking with your dick for two seconds,” Carol snapped in response, and the two made their way back upstairs, closing the door behind them.

Lucy scrambled out from underneath the stairs. “Now what?”

“Hurry, grab her and get out, don’t dawdle no matter what!”

“…what about the cure?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Lucy also paused, her hand on the door upstairs. “Jiya. I’m not leaving without—I won’t choose between Amy and Flynn, I won’t.”

“You can’t get both,” Jiya whispered. “You _can’t_.”

Fury seized her, like nothing she’d ever felt before, hot black and vile rising up inside of her like slick oil. She could remember being terrified watching _The X-Files _as the black oil alien goo possessed people, floating in their eyes, and scaring herself silly imagining what that felt like.

She could easily imagine that it felt like this.

Was this how Flynn felt, during the blood rage? When his eyes bled red and all he wanted to do was hurt and harm?

Lucy didn’t want to hurt, exactly, to harm, but she wasn’t going to make a Sophie’s choice. She would not choose between her sister and her lover, she would _not_. She was going to save Amy, and she was going to save Flynn, and she was going to make Wyatt and Flynn work out their shit, and they were all going to be happy, God _dammit_.

“Jiya,” she said, “I love you, from the bottom of my heart, but fuck whatever your visions say. Find where the cure is and I’m going to get Amy.”

She yanked the door open and hurried out.

* * *

Wyatt set Rufus down on the outskirts of town, panting hard, still caught halfway between monster and man. “Get out of here,” he said, or tried to say, the words garbled and harsh in his mouth, foreign, too many too-large teeth for him to speak properly.

Rufus, luckily, seemed to get the message. “You’re going back for him, aren’t you?”

Wyatt nodded.

“Look, I don’t know what happened,” Rufus added, double-checking that his vials and data were all safe, “but you three work, more than you think you do. And I’ve come to actually like the bastard. So—try and bring him back.”

Wyatt nodded again unable to do anything else.

“I’m going to see—get all this to Mason, see if we can work with Denise, release the information before Rittenhouse goes after her tomorrow.”

Wyatt couldn’t say good luck, so instead, he just gave up and shifted all the way into a wolf. Rufus winced as Wyatt’s bones snapped and cracked, his muscles ripping apart and re-knitting, his face fully elongating into a snout, dropping down onto all fours and growling in pain.

“I hope you know just how fucking disturbing that is to watch,” Rufus said when Wyatt had finished.

Wyatt shook himself out and fixed Rufus with a look. _How do you think it feels, jackass?_

Rufus grinned at him and Wyatt’s heart melted. He loved the sassy, ridiculous nerd. He bumped his head against Rufus’s leg, whining until Rufus pet him. “Is this your way of saying good luck?”

Wyatt panted and licked Rufus’s hand.

“Ew, gross man, gross.” Rufus was still grinning, though. “Now go get ‘em.”

Wyatt turned and raced back through the woods.

* * *

Lucy bent down in front of the bedroom door, muttering to herself as she undid the magical locks. “C’mon…”

The door slid open.

“Ugh, _Mom_, I said go _away_.”

Lucy had never been so glad to hear her sister’s voice in her life. She shoved the door open. “Amy!”

Amy Preston looked a bit worse for wear, dark circles under her eyes and some bruises around her wrists, but she was in one piece, she was smiling dopily, she was _alive_. Lucy grabbed her into a fierce hug.

“You’re okay!” she whispered. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Wow, Lucy, you are _short_!” Amy announced. “You’re so short… it’s like… you’re like a little _elf_.”

“Are you high right now!?” Lucy snapped, disbelieving.

“I kept trying to escape,” Amy pouted.

“Oh my God,” Lucy muttered.

“I told you to just grab her and go,” Jiya said in the earpiece.

“I’m not leaving without that cure, where is it.”

Jiya sighed.

“Oh, you mean the—the big thingy in the thingy?” Amy said. “It’s in the extra big fridge that they hide behind the regular fridge. In the kitchen.”

“Amy,” Lucy said solemnly, “I know that you’re on drugs right now and so you’re going to be annoying, but also, I want you to know that I adore you.”

“Oh good,” Amy replied. “Y’know I was really unsure and that my whole defying Mom thing wasn’t gonna amount to anything.”

“I genuinely cannot tell if you’re being sarcastic.”

“I’m totally being sarcastic.” Amy planted a sloppy kiss on Lucy’s cheek. “Always knew you’d come, Luce. You’re the bestest.”

Lucy, somehow, got Amy downstairs without incident, then got into the kitchen. “Just sit down here while I get the cure, okay?”

Amy sat down, not in a chair, but on the table. Lucy sighed and set about trying to find the spell that would move the fridge out of the way to get to the larger fridge. Hmm. If she touched the handle—she got the memory, the history of how a dark-haired man, must be Nicholas, opened it, seemed like he used this one spell combination—

The fridge slid back, revealing a hidden freezer panel embedded into the wall. Various vials gleamed, some red, some black, some clear.

Lucy stared. Shit. “Which one is it?” she whispered.

“The clear ones on the upper right are all the cure, the red are samples from different vampires, the black is the virus.”

Lucy crammed all the clear ones into her pockets, right as Amy said, “Oh, hey Mom, did you know bitch rhymes with witch and you manage to be both?”

Lucy whipped around to find Carol and Nicholas Keynes standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

Carol Preston glared wearily at Amy. “I told you not to drug her.”

“She’s not trying to punch people anymore, is she?” Nicholas snapped back.

Carol focused in on Lucy. “Honey. Please. Stop this nonsense.”

Lucy held up a hand, willing herself ferociously not to tremble. “Don’t make me do this.”

“Don’t make _me_,” Nicholas started, but Carol stepped in front of him.

“Lucy.” Carol’s voice was warm and soothing. “This isn’t what you’re meant for. You’re meant for so much more. We’ve always talked about it. About how you’re meant to be for our community.”

“Have we?” Lucy snapped. “Or did you just tell me what to be and what to do and I went along with it? Princess Preston?” Magic crackled, black and sick, between her fingers. “I don’t want to do this, Mom, I don’t want to, but if you don’t get out of my way—”

“Are you really going to throw all of this away? Your legacy, everything you’ve worked so hard for your entire life—for a murderer?”

“A man that you poisoned,” Lucy hissed. “A man you set up to die and enslave. Just like you wanted to enslave every one of his kind, just like you’ll want to enslave werewolves next, I bet—don’t even try and lie to me Mom, you’ve lied to me my entire life, don’t lie to me about this too. How much have you done, huh? How much—what else have you done, who else have you hurt? Jessica Logan? She was an activist, she was a huge lobbyer for werewolf rights and she was murdered, were you behind that, too? Huh?”

Carol looked like Lucy had shoved a lemon into her mouth. “I can’t let you leave with that, Lucy.” Her tone was grim.

“Lucy…” Jiya whispered over the earpiece.

“And I can’t let you hurt my family,” Lucy replied. For the first time, she wanted to use her magic to manipulate, because that was what it would take to get them out of here.

Could she do it, though? Could she hurt her own mother?

“Screw this,” Nicholas said, and started forward.

Lucy let out a scream she hadn’t even realized had been building up inside of her. It felt like it had been building since she was a child, ever since she’d first touched that journal and first used her magic, ever since her mother had held her up as the wunderkid of the magical community, for years and years and years—and now it was all coming out, the oil gushing forth and choking the land, drowning it, black and vile and sick and somehow, strangely, cleansing.

She grabbed Nicholas with one hand and her mother with the other. “Amy, run!”

Drugged up and high as a kite she might have been, but Amy still knew how to follow a desperate order when she heard one, and scrambled out of the kitchen—nearly tripping at one point and nearly smacking her face on the door frame at another—and Lucy heard the front door slam a moment later.

Carol screamed as well, tried to blast magic at Lucy, but Lucy had been taught by her, she knew her tricks, and she didn’t hesitate. She dove in deep, deep, deep, and yanked out the very heart of Carol Preston, the very heart of Nicholas Keynes, yanked their hearts right out of their mouths and shoved all three of them into the past.

* * *

Flynn snarled as the threw the lifeless body of another enemy to the side. _Emma, Emma, Emma, _his rage chanted, the one person who evaded him, dealing spells to keep him at bay. He had to get to her, had to rip the heart out of her, had to sink his teeth into her arrogant neck and crunch and snap and drink until she was drained dry like a fly in a spider’s web—

Pain radiated up his shoulder and he roared, leaping, ignoring the cuts on his body that weren’t healing, the burn marks from the spells, only knowing the need to fight, to maim, to kill.

She was in front of him now, arrogant as ever, cold like a pillar of marble, snarling right back at him when he snarled at her, and they clashed like oncoming planets. Dirt flew everywhere, birds scattered, and drops of blood scattered like rain across the bark of the trees as he sunk in his claws and his fangs and Emma sank in her magic. Kill her, kill her, _kill her_—

He wavered in pain, staggered for just a second, and her burning hand caught his throat, singing it, she had cast a spell on her hands to make them fire—

There was a howl like a nightmare on a cold October night, and a ball of fur and fury slammed into Emma, knocking her sideways.

Flynn staggered to his feet, fangs baring anew. No way was this wolf taking his kill from him. He leapt at Emma too, and this time she shrieked, the first real instance of pain, of fear, that he had felt from her. It spiked his blood and made him press on even hotter.

The wolf tore into her, growling and snarling, seizing Emma’s leg and shaking her like he was trying to rip the limb right off of her. Flynn raked his nails into her chest and she was screaming, words, but he wasn’t sure—were they orders to others or spells? He didn’t know, didn’t care—he smelled the blood gushing up out of her like a hot, thick, delicious fountain and he fixed his mouth to her and drank.

The woman’s screams died and faded into beautiful silence as he drank and drank and drank. He hadn’t been this full in ages. It wasn’t like Lucy, but nothing could taste as good as Lucy, except perhaps Wyatt—

Wyatt. The wolf, he knew him now, the red was receding from his vision, it was Wyatt.

Flynn sank to his knees and Wyatt released Emma’s leg, whining, licking all over Flynn’s face, nuzzling him frantically like he thought Flynn might fall over.

Actually he might fall over. He was so tired, he was bleeding all over from open wounds that weren’t healing, he was burned all over, some of the bullets fired at him had definitely been silver and fuck he _hurt_. What—why was—the blood burned, Emma’s blood _burned_, had she—

Flynn gasped, clutching at his chest. Emma had done something, some final fuck you. Her blood was burning him, burning him inside out, and he tried to scream in pain but he couldn’t even get a sound out, the world spinning, black dots appearing in his vision.

Wyatt made a distressed noise and then next thing Flynn knew it was a human Wyatt trying to hold him up, shaking him, saying something—something like _fuck, fuck, don’t do this, Flynn, hey, Garcia, hey, fuck, don’t—hey fuck no Flynn you can’t leave you’re my anchor do you know what that means, Garcia you’re my anchor you can’t leave you can’t leave I love you don’t you can’t—_

Lie down and not get back up again, he thought, and then there was nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took one of Flynn's vampire jokes from this post:
> 
> https://deservingporcupine.tumblr.com/post/179845109733/make-a-vampire-character-whos-lived-through
> 
> In case you're wondering, he's quoting the part in Dracula where the titular character finds the heroes destroying his coffins of land and basically tells them all to fuck off and that their hopes of defeating him are in vain. You know, typical villain monologue.


	10. Chapter 10

Rufus was in town, which was good.

He had no car, which was bad.

They did have a car, back at the bunker, but they’d been using it to go to the grocery store and they hadn’t been sure exactly how Emma had tracked them to the bunker, so using that car was out. Looked like it was time to use his old favorite pastime.

It was a tradition of his, back when he’d been younger, to break into Mason’s car every time Mason got the newest, fanciest model. Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lotus, Bugatti or Lamborghini (Mason and Elon Musk hated each other so Mason never bought a Tesla on pure principle), Rufus would hack their fancy digital locks and take the car on a joyride just to prove to Mason that his ultra-expensive plushy new rides weren’t worth shit.

He wasn’t proud of the fact that he was about to legitimately steal the car of some poor average schmuck, but needs must.

The grocery store was littered with potential marks. Hmm. What would most likely pass unnoticed by any Rittenhouse witches lurking about, but also get him to Mason Industries as fast as possible?

Rufus glanced back towards the woods. He didn’t want to just leave Flynn and Wyatt in the lurch. He suspected, for all of Flynn’s strength and skill, that he was outnumbered too heavily and would be hurt—and Wyatt sure could help Flynn with the fighting bit, but could he help him with the healing?

Shit. Rufus wavered. He really should go and get his precious research to Mason, so that Rittenhouse couldn’t hurt any other vampires, so that they had proof against Rittenhouse, but… Flynn was his friend. They’d spent over a month cooped up together, you couldn’t just abandon a guy after that. And while Rufus had spent a lot of time with Wyatt, goofing off, Flynn was actually the one he’d spent the most time with, running tests on him. Flynn had always had a quip to fire back at Rufus, able to keep up with Rufus’s sharp wit, in a way that few people could. They’d had long talks while he’d taken and tested Flynn’s blood.

Fuck it. Rufus booked it for the grocery store. Witches weren’t like vampires or werewolves. You couldn’t shake some silver at them and expect to be fine. But there were still things you could do to protect yourself. He grabbed salt, rose water, and then went to the garden section and grabbed yarrow. If there’d been a church close by he could’ve grabbed holy water or something but that might also hurt Flynn so maybe not.

Okay. Okay, he could do this.

Rufus purchased everything (thank God for self-checkout lanes) and then found the fastest-looking car in the lot. Sorry, middle-class sedan owner, this was your unlucky day. Hope your insurance is good.

His knuckles were pale and bloodless around the steering wheel as he gripped it tightly, practically strangled it, on the drive back. C’mon, Flynn, just hold out until he got there, there had to be something in his lab work that could help him, right?

Rufus skidded the car to a halt in front of the bunker as he caught sight of bodies, his seatbelt yanking at him. He stuffed the yarrow into his shirt, spritzed himself with the rose water (great, now he was going to smell like his Nana’s bathroom) and grabbed the salt. If he had to make a circle around himself like this was fucking _Hocus Pocus _then he’d swallow his damn dignity and do it.

But when he got out, he saw that there wasn’t anyone moving.

Not anyone besides Wyatt.

“C’mon,” Wyatt was saying. He was kneeling, holding—oh shit, that was Flynn. “C’mon, Garcia, don’t do this, don’t fucking do this, don’t you dare leave, fuck!”

Rufus swallowed down his gag reflex as he stepped around the, uh, remains of what had been other Rittenhouse members. He’d witnessed Flynn’s savagery before, in the photos from the crime scenes Flynn had created back when this had all started, but he hadn’t ever seen it all in person. It was… a lot.

Wyatt’s head shot up and he snarled, wolfish teeth protruding, eyes yellow, until he saw who it was and subsided, his eyes flashing blue again. “Rufus.” He sounded small, and young, his voice broke. “You gotta fix him.”

“I can try.” Rufus knelt down beside Flynn. The guy looked worse for wear, all right. Burn marks and deep, slashing cuts littered his body. Had Emma gone to town with the _sectumsempra_ spell or something? It sure looked like it.

Speaking of Emma, the woman herself was lying just a few feet away, drained of blood, her eyes open. But her blood didn’t look red, it looked… why did it look black?

“She did something,” Wyatt said, and Rufus noticed for the first time that there were burn marks around Wyatt’s mouth. “Her blood, as she was dying, I think she cursed her own fucking body, and I—I got some blood in my mouth, ‘cause I was biting her, y’know, but Flynn, he, he _drank _it, he drained it all and now—it’s not healing him and he won’t wake up, Rufus he won’t wake up.”

Wyatt sounded so completely helpless, and Rufus had the urge to hug the guy, but they unfortunately didn’t have time for comfort. He examined Flynn—his eyes, his mouth, the cuts and bruises and burns, and grabbed a needle from his kit to sample some of Flynn’s blood.

It came out black.

“I don’t know what this is,” Rufus admitted. “It’s magic, not science. I don’t know what I can do to save him, but maybe, if magic did this, magic can fix it.”

“There’s no time,” Wyatt said, sounding desperate and angry. “Lucy’s in danger, we have to get to her.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I don’t know. I just—I can sense her, I just know.”

Rufus looked at Flynn. “We could… this is going to sound fucking crazy but if we could get all of Emma’s blood out of him, and replace it with healthy blood…”

“He can drink from me,” Wyatt said quickly.

“He’d drain you, Wyatt, no. And we can’t do it here, I need—I need equipment, this isn’t some—I’m not Hawkeye, here, I’m not performing a battlefield operation!” Rufus took a few breaths to calm down. “Okay. Okay, load him into the car. You say Lucy’s in danger? Great. She can probably help fix him. Two birds with one stone. Let’s go, wolf boy.”

Someone had to be the sane one with a plan around here and, crappy as that plan was, it looked like the sane person was going to be him.

* * *

She’s standing on Stanford campus, but it’s so different. Everyone is wearing older clothes.

Someone approaches her. It’s a man and he looks familiar. He’s in one of her history classes, she realizes. What’s his name? Harry?

“Miss Preston?” The man smiles. He’s handsome when he smiles, but more than that, something about him seems so _safe_.

She rather needs safe. She’s trying to keep it under wraps but everyone is starting to whisper about her change of clothes. About who might’ve done this to her. Of course nobody thinks it’s prize student Benjamin Cahill, such a gentleman, he’s going places, such a good family he comes from. And besides, it doesn’t matter who the father is, does it? What matters is now, in the eyes of the school, Carol Preston is a slut.

“Hi, you, uh, probably don’t know me, but I’m Henry, Henry Wallace? We have the same class on the history of the Puritans in North America.” Henry, that’s his name. She smiles at him. “Anyway I was—I really admired the way you answered the professor earlier today, about the Salem Witch Trials, and I was wondering if I could, if you could help me, on my midterm paper? I’m completely lost here.”

Carol, Lucy, both of them, one reliving, one trapped, smiles. This is the first time someone’s been friendly to her in weeks. “I’d love to,” she says.

_I have to go back, _Lucy thinks, but she doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go back to. Surely she has to—

Another memory pulls her under and she’s lost again.

* * *

“Lucy!?” Jiya’d been yelling over the earpiece for a good five minutes now, and she knew that at this point she should probably give it up as a lost cause, but—but _Lucy_.

She’d seen this. She’d seen this, in one of her visions. Either Lucy got the cure, or she got Amy. One of them had to be left behind. Or, in this case…

In this case, Lucy was trapped in the past of her mother and Nicholas Keynes, her mind lost.

“What do I do?” Jiya asked, looking at Mason. “I’m not—I don’t know magic, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to help her.”

Over on the earpiece, Jiya heard scuffling, and her heart leapt with hope—but then another voice came on the line. “Are you the voice my sister was talking to?”

Amy. Fuck, Amy was still high on drugs to keep her docile. “Yes, Amy, I’m the voice.”

“Try and understand it,” Amy sang. “Make a noise and make it clear!”

Jiya grit her teeth. “I’m Lucy’s friend Jiya. I’m a time witch too, but I can see the present and the future. I saw you, trapped, that’s how Lucy knew where to find you.”

“She’s lost.” Amy sounded sad. Jiya prayed the drugs were starting to wear off. “She won’t look at me. I tried slapping her.”

Jiya looked at Mason, who was pacing back and forth with his arms folded. “Does Lucy have a familiar?” Mason asked. “Familiars are used to—to ground witches when they perform powerful spells, so that this sort of thing doesn’t happen.”

“I don’t think so. She didn’t have any animal with her in the bunker.”

Mason put his hands in the air as if to say _then we’re shit out of luck _and grabbed whisky off of his desk.

“Jiya?” Amy sounded like the drugs were starting to wear off. “Is there anything we can do?”

“I don’t know,” Jiya admitted. “I… I don’t know.”

* * *

She wasn’t quite sober yet, but she was sober enough to realize how not sober she was.

Amy gripped the kitchen counter, fighting down nausea. Whatever fucking pills Emma and Nicholas had all but forced down her throat, they were strong. But she was more aware, now, aware of space better, aware of her own body better, aware of the bodies on the floor.

Lucy still had a strong grip, a death grip, on Nicholas and Carol.

Amy had run, like Lucy had said, but when Lucy hadn’t followed—she couldn’t leave her sister. Not when her sister had come for her.

She slowly crouched down, keeping her hand against the kitchen cabinets until her knees found the floor. The room wobbled, rainbow around the edges of objects.

The bodies weren’t right. Amy could see right through them, see them as parcels of molecules, but she knew that wasn’t magic—that was just the drugs.

She pried Lucy’s hands off the other two. Fuck them, they could stay in a coma reliving their lives for as long as they damn well wanted. But she had to bring Lucy back.

Outside came the sound of a car careening to a stop, and then male voices. “Stay back!” Amy yelled. She lurched, grabbing the nearest free object on the kitchen counter. “I have a soup ladle!”

There was a pause outside the door, and then someone said, “Did she just say a soup ladle?”

“That’s Rufus!” Jiya, Lucy’s friend in her ear, yelled. Amy had stuck Lucy’s ear friend into her ear, so Jiya was now very loud. She made Amy’s head vibrate. “Let them in!”

Amy staggered to her feet and after a few tries yanked the front door open.

“One of you is Rufus,” she announced.

The man wearing the hoodie and the _Han Shot First _shirt raised his hand. The other man looked like he’d been attacked by wild dogs, and he had another, very tall body slung over his shoulders.

“Move,” the man barked, and Rufus yanked Amy out of the way so the other guy could get in, laying the man down on the floor.

Amy kicked the man. “He’s having a worse trip than I am.”

“And who the fuck are you?” the guy demanded.

“That’s Amy,” Rufus said. “Amy, this is Wyatt. I’d excuse his behavior but he’s usually this charming anyway.”

Wyatt caught sight of Lucy and let out a low, keening sound, like a dog in pain. “I told you she was in trouble!”

“She won’t wake up. Her magic.” Amy went over to Lucy, grabbing a knife from the knife block on her way. Wow, she really should not be holding sharp objects right now. “She sent them both—into their pasts, but she’s—when she does it she’s in their minds and I think she went too deep and I can’t get her out. She’s not even touching them and she’s not moving.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Rufus yelled as Amy began to cut her palm. “What are you doing!?”

“I’m not a witch but—I have—her blood, my blood, her blood.” Amy cut Lucy’s palm next. “Blood has power. I saw this in a movie once and it worked.”

“You’re using movie magic, fuck, great, that definitely isn’t ever random and fake or anything.”

“She’s doing _what!?_” Jiya squawked on the other end of the earpiece.

Amy took the earpiece out and handed it to Rufus. “She’s making ping pong balls in my head, you take her.”

Rufus put the earpiece in, then winced at whatever Jiya was yelling. “Look, I don’t know what else we can do,” Rufus said. “Lucy doesn’t have a…” Rufus froze, his mouth open and eyes comically wide, then looked at Wyatt.

Wyatt looked back at him. “What?”

Rufus literally shoved Wyatt over to Lucy. “Take her other hand, you furry idiot!”

“Why?” Wyatt asked, but he did as he was told.

“Because you’ve literally been sleeping with her and eating the food she gives you and spending every moment nuzzling her, Wyatt, you moron, you’re Lucy’s fucking familiar!”

“I’m _not_—” Wyatt paused. “…I did sense she was in danger.”

“Take her hand!” Amy grabbed Lucy’s bloody one and prayed this would work. “I’m not letting you stay down there, okay? You came for me, I’m coming for you.” She pressed their bloody palms together. “Your blood! My blood!” Amy squeezed with all of her might. “_Now get your ass back here!_”

Wyatt gave a strange howl of pain as their palms all lit up.

* * *

She’s standing, he’s standing, they’re standing at a coven meeting. It’s his first time, it’s time to be initiated into Rittenhouse. This is the first moment of the rest of his life. He is burdened with glorious purpose.

_Lucy._

Someone is calling her. It’s a voice she’s known all her life.

_Lucy._

Something tugs at her, and she’s not Nicholas anymore, she’s a ghost, she has—blood, she feels her blood singing—

_Your blood, my blood. Your blood, my blood. Your blood, my blood._

There is a wolf inside her and it howls. It warms her, strengthens her. She’s not a ghost, she can feel the ground beneath her feet again. She has a body.

_Your blood, my blood. Your blood, my blood. Your blood, my blood._

She wraps her arms around the wolf. She’s nowhere she recognizes, but that’s okay, she has her wolf and he’s grounding her.

_Your blood, my blood. Your blood, my blood. Your blood, my blood._

A voice screaming like it will shake the very foundations of the gods.

_Now get your ass back here!_

Lucy’s eyes flew open and she shot upright, coughing, bile in her throat, squeezing painfully tight onto two hands.

Why did her hand sting so much?

She looked around and saw Amy, their hands covered in blood, clutching onto her left hand until they were shaking. “Ames?”

Amy looked up, saw Lucy was awake, and burst into tears. Lucy reached for her, using her bloody hand to wrap around Amy’s shoulders and hug her. “You weren’t—you weren’t responding and I didn’t know what else to do and I thought maybe, if it worked—and if I believed enough—and then Wyatt helped—”

Lucy rubbed her sister’s back and looked over at Wyatt, who was still holding onto her other hand.

Wyatt gave her a watery smile. “Turns out spending a month and a half letting you pet me makes me your familiar.”

Lucy laughed, a bit hysterically, and yanked him in, kissing him. Wyatt made a startled noise against her mouth but kissed her back, soft and sure.

Lucy pulled back. “And Flynn?”

Wyatt looked like he was choking, and then another voice spoke up. “…he’s here, Lucy.”

She looked up and saw Rufus standing there.

Amy and Wyatt helped her to her feet and Rufus grabbed some supplies to bandage their hands. “I had an idea to get rid of Emma’s blood and replace it with good blood,” he explained as he finished telling all that had happened, what Emma had done, “but that’ll take a fuckton of blood and I thought maybe there could be another way…”

“I offered my blood, it’s werewolf blood, that has to count for something!” Wyatt all but shouted.

“How has he even survived this long?” Amy asked.

Rufus winced.“Uh… honestly I don't know. With whatever Emma did to him, and his injuries, he should definitely be dead by now. I think the guy's just extraordinarily stubborn. If anyone could hang on while a blood curse is trying to kill him it would be Flynn.”

Jiya must've said something on the other end of the earpiece, or maybe Mason, because Rufus nodded. “Ah, yeah, no, he hasn't had anything besides like, squirrel blood.”

Lucy felt herself blushing. “That's… ah, that's not true.”

They all looked at her and Lucy wanted to sink into the floor. Wyatt caught on first. “Oh my fuck, you… he…”

Lucy nodded. “There's, uh, a theory that—if you—um, several love potions and that kind of thing used to use—menstrual blood. I think that might be what's keeping him alive—and I mean scientifically, right, Rufus, it's very—full of nutrition?” She honestly wanted to die a little.

Amy stared. And stared. And stared. “I didn't need to know this. I am—I am _not _high enough for this.”

Wyatt looked dazed, his cheeks pink, but not in the same way that Amy did. Lucy filed _that _thought away for much, much later.

“Great!” Rufus clapped his hands together loudly. “So your weird sex shenanigans have changed him from Completely Dead to Mostly Dead! Fantastic. Let's get started on the rest of it so that I can find some bleach and cleanse my brain as soon as possible.” He then winced again. “Uh, Jiya's—Jiya's laughing, by the way.”

“Jiya can fuck off,” Wyatt muttered, still blushing.

“Mason says that if that's the case—wait how do _you _know about love magic!?” Rufus demanded, cutting himself off. “Anyway. Mason says that there's a chance he could still be, uh, well normally—would you two stop talking over each other!? Sorry. So we can't just worry about the physical, we have to worry about the mental. Mason's guessing that thanks to that little, uh, stunt, there's a chance you can get to him mentally, that there's still a tether between the two of you, and you can use that while I work on him physically.”

“So there's a… a connection between them or something?” Wyatt asked.

“If you say Lucy has to give him a true love's kiss I will die laughing,” Amy announced.

“Laugh it up, fuzzballs,” Rufus snapped. “Lucy, what's the plan? I can't start work on him until he's conscious enough to drink blood to replace whatever I'm draining out of him, so it's up to you to… I don't even know, follow your connection? Or something? And bring him back.”

Right. Because it was up to her, now. As the one with magic, and as their leader. She'd told Flynn that he was hers, and that she wouldn't let him go, wouldn't let him die, and she'd meant that. Flynn might have given up on himself, but she wasn't going to give up on him. She would bring him back, whatever it took.

Lucy looked around the kitchen. If they were going to do a crazy operation anywhere, she supposed it would be here. “Amy, get Mom and Nicholas out of here. Tie them up in case they wake up. Rufus, here.” She dug the vials out of her pockets and handed them over. “It’s the cure to the blood rage. Wyatt, get Flynn onto the table. He can’t drink blood until he’s conscious. Once he gets conscious, we can have him drink and we can start replacing his blood. And apply the cure.”

“Okay but how do you plan to get him conscious?” Rufus asked.

“If I knew what spell Emma did, I could just do a counterspell, but…” Lucy sighed. “I don’t suppose you know what she was saying, Wyatt?”

Wyatt shook his head. “I wasn’t able to really pick out the words.”

“Okay. Then I—I'm going to do what Mason said, I'm going to follow the thread and—hope it works. I’m going to go in and get him.”

“You just barely got out!” Amy said. “What if you’re trapped again!?”

“Just, trust me!” Lucy sat on the table and took Flynn’s face in her hands, pressing their foreheads together. He really did look like death itself, bleeding cuts and burn marks, bruises all over, and unnaturally pale even for a vampire. “I can get him back. He’s in here, and I’ll find him.” She would, she had to.

Wyatt put his hand on her shoulder, and immediately she felt stronger, grounded. Lucy took a deep breath. “Amy, help Rufus. When Flynn gets conscious, get him to feed on Wyatt. We’ll switch to me in a bit. Then start pumping Emma’s blood out. Can you do this?”

“Can I do this,” Rufus scoffed. “It’s not like this is the kind of thing my degree is in or anything.” He turned to Amy. “Okay, you. Here. Tie this into a slipknot.”

“That sounds like werewolf lube,” Amy announced.

She then immediately clapped her hands over her mouth. “I think I’m still a bit drugged.”

“My assistant is on drugs,” Rufus muttered. “And making sex jokes. Fantastic. Lucy, do me a favor and be quick about this?”

Lucy laughed tiredly, and Rufus winked at her. Okay. Okay. This wasn’t what her mother had trained her for, how to use her magic, but it felt, somehow, like this was what she had been preparing all her life to do.

She pressed her forehead even harder against Flynn’s, her hands trembling where they cupped his cheeks. She thought she could feel it, a connection, something of her inside of him, something tying them like a thin glowing thread, similar to the connection between her and Wyatt when she'd felt him while trapped inside Mom and Nicholas's memories but different, its own creation.

She held onto that connection with all of her might and prepared to follow where it led.

“I’m coming for you,” she whispered, and she dove in.

* * *

With a powerful magical coven on his tail, there’s not a lot of places he can hide. He doesn’t want to risk that they’re watching the airports, so Europe is out of the question, even if something in him wants to go home, to Croatia, to remind himself that he is in some way still the same person he was, even if he’s no longer—

It’s hard to control himself, but he—he manages. He’s currently nursing a drink at the bar, waiting for this doctor to show up. Karl something. He can’t get drunk anymore, unfortunately, but he does still appreciate the taste, the burn of it.

He’s hoping this doctor can help him. In exchange, he’s going to use his NSA connections—the ones he has left, anyway—to get Karl out of São Paulo and back into the U.S. Stiv introduced them, and he trusts Stiv.

And then a woman sits next to him.

In the dim light of the bar, something about her seems to… to glow. She makes the rest of the place look less real, somehow. Like a dream or a memory.

“Garcia Flynn,” she says, her voice soft and yet weighted.

He looks into her eyes, and feels as though he knows her.

He _knows _her. He knows her blood, the taste of it heavy on his tongue. Honey. Strawberries. Cinnamon. Salt and vinegar chips.

But that can’t be possible. He’s—he’s hurt some people, and he’s tried so hard not to but he’s a new vampire and this blood rage isn’t going away and if he did feed on her, she wouldn’t be alive right now.

Yet, his blood sings for her. He can hear her heartbeat like music.

“_Nao falo ingles_.”

“I know you speak English,” the woman replies. “Just like I knew your name. Aren’t you curious about why?”

She speaks so gently, and Rittenhouse has not been gentle, not with him, but he cannot trust that she’s not with them. Honeypot is the oldest spy trick in the book.

“If you know that much,” he replies, “then you know I’m not good to be around right now.” Already the hunger in him is growing.

The woman takes his hand and he startles. “I know you,” she whispers. “Better than you think. I just need you to remember. Garcia, please, remember me.”

He looks up at her, and for a moment everything flickers. The dingy bar fades away, replaced by a bedroom, and his hand is not grasping hers, but rather tangled in her hair.

“Like that,” the woman breathes. “Come on, Garcia, I can’t do all this alone, I need you to work with me.”

There is another flash and it feels like it nearly splits his head open, sitting on a couch with this woman, the both of them wearing hoodies, moodily sipping on beer, watching an old movie.

“Who are you?” he manages to croak.

“My name is Lucy. You know me. I know you. I—” Pain and joy, raw and ragged, flit across her face. “I love you, Garcia, and—and we’re waiting for you to come back to us. Please.”

“Who’s… who’s we?”

“Your family.”

“My family?” His girls? “Do I—do I save—them?”

Lucy, for some reason, looks like she’s going to cry. “Yes,” she whispers. She grasps his hand in both of hers. “You save us. You’re a hero, Garcia, but I’m not letting you get a—a hero’s ending, or whatever you think passes for a hero’s ending, you’re coming home with me. Please. Remember me, come on, remember me.”

Another flash, his mouth on her neck, sweet honey pouring down his throat, she’s so small and so strong at the same time—

“Come on, come on,” Lucy whispers.

The flash is gone, and Lucy makes a furious, frustrated noise. “Oh come _on_,” she cries, and grabs him, kissing him.

It’s like something slots into place. “Bite me,” she whispers. “Bite me, bite me, bite me, Garcia, come on, come back to us, bite me—”

She bares her throat and it somehow doesn’t occur to him not to do as she says, and he sinks his teeth in, and the world comes rushing back.

* * *

Flynn surged awake, latching onto Lucy’s neck, and she gave a small cry but held on, carding her hands through his hair, encouraging him, praising him.

Wyatt dropped his hand from her shoulder and exhaled shakily, his eyes wet. “Now, Rufus,” he said, his voice rough.

Rufus, with Amy’s help, started draining Emma’s blood out of Flynn. “I feel like I’m in the Renaissance when they still believed in leeches and the Four Humors,” Rufus muttered.

Flynn drank, and drank, and drank, until Lucy got pale and shaky and they had to dislodge him and switch him over to Wyatt instead. Amy made a face. “Is this kinky to you guys? Because I gotta say I am not getting the appeal.”

“Amy,” Lucy said, her voice rough, “get me something with electrolytes and understand that I love you when I say shut the fuck up.”

Amy laughed, high and delighted, and went to grab a Gatorade out of the fridge.

Wyatt held onto Flynn with everything he had. It wasn’t like last time—okay, so it was a bit, it felt damn good—but he was prepared for it now and could ignore that, focusing instead on—on the oddly comforting sensation that came from it.

_I love you_. Vampires were supposed to be able to sense your emotions, that was why there was that whole thing with vampires where they got angry if you suggested they drank from unwilling victims because willing victims tasted so much better. Hopefully, just maybe, that meant that Flynn could sense what Wyatt felt about him. _I love you, I’m sorry, I should’ve said, I love you so much it’s terrifying._

He started to feel dizzy and Flynn detached himself, collapsing back onto the table. Wyatt caught his hand and didn’t let go, raising Flynn’s knuckles to his lips, his fingers shaking so badly he could hardly manage it, pressing his mouth to Flynn’s hand like he had the wild idea of leaving a permanent mark there.

Amy passed him a Gatorade as well. Wyatt fumbled for it blindly, still watching Flynn.

Flynn winced. “No offense, Rufus, but whatever you’re doing is making me feel like shit.”

“It’s called saving your life, you ungrateful jackass,” Rufus replied.

“I suppose I can volunteer as tribute,” Amy said, “if he really needs another dose.”

Wyatt realized he had started stroking Flynn’s hair and paused, embarrassed, only for Flynn to make a small, unhappy sound. Wyatt resumed.

Flynn gave him a tired wink.

“So we just… sit here?” Lucy asked.

“Yup!” Rufus checked something with his equipment. “Ain’t science exciting?”

“I’m calling Denise,” Lucy announced. “We still need to track down Cahill, we need to get your findings to Mason, I need to talk to Jiya, Mom and Nicholas need to be properly arrested—”

Wyatt reached for her and pulled her in, taking her hand and adding it to his and Flynn’s so that all of their fingers were intertwined.

Flynn’s thumb stroked weakly over Lucy’s knuckles, and she quickly wiped away a tear, bending down to kiss the corner of his mouth. “I told you,” she whispered. “You’re staying with me.”

Rufus rolled his eyes fondly at the three of them, and then said something quietly under his breath to Jiya over the earpiece—Wyatt was pretty sure it was unbearably sappy. Amy kept ordering them to drink their Gatorade, for fuck’s sake, did they want to pass out?

Wyatt’s heart felt so damn full, his wolf content inside of him, Flynn and Lucy’s hands caught up in his. They were going to be okay.

His pack was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stole that joke Amy made from this post because I'm secretly twelve: https://herpderpdoctor.tumblr.com/post/184218660759/slipknot-sounds-like-werewolf-lube
> 
> And yes, Amy got her idea from the movie Practical Magic. Because how could I not.
> 
> AND YOU ALL THOUGHT THE KINKY PERIOD BLOOD WAS JUST PORN FOR PORN'S SAKE. MWAHAHA. I TRICKED YOU ALL! IT HAD PLOT!
> 
> And for those of you who want a smutty epilogue, you can read it here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/188731106433/hey-babe-since-we-were-robbed-of
> 
> Or you can find it in chapter two of the fic "As the Fairytales Say," a collection of fic codas originally posted on my tumblr.


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